Question Will a NH-U9S from Noctua be able to keep a I7 12700F cool?

[Ethan Peffers]

I recently bought a prebuilt Asus computer from best buy with these specifications:

Motherboard: G15CF
CPU: Core I7 12700F
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3070
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x16GB 3200mhz
Storage: 1.5TB (Two M.2's: 500GB and 1TB)

The stock cooler in the computer is awful and was hoping to upgrade it. However, I only have about 140-130mm of clearance for height in my computer case. I looked for hours and could really only find the NH-U9S which would fit in my case but also give me good cooling performance. I'm not planning on overclocking (obviously since it is an F series) rendering, or anything like that I only plan to use it for games and watching videos. The current CPU cooler, while playing an intense game, can get up to 80-100 degrees Celsius and will eventually thermal throttle. When running a benchmark in Cinebench, I also noticed that my chip would score a significantly lower score when compared to others who also have the i7 12700F. (Mine scored 15000 when compared to others' 17000ish.) All I want is for my cpu to run at its full potential and not thermal throttle. Will this cooler be enough in my circumstances or are there any other coolers that are better?

 

[Lafong]

As far as I know, the U9S is still near the top of the cooler list for the under 140mm tall category.

I have one myself on a 7 year old Skylake CPU; no complaints.

I've been thinking about upgrading my CPU, so I have wondered about the U9S as well.

Below are a series of notes and reviews I've gathered about the U9S from various sources over the last year or so. Make of them what you will:

I am using a small Noctua NH U9S for my 11700. Disabling Power Limit (PL) got me stable 4.39 Ghz with 75-79°C (80°C max), 160-170W (176W max)

The Alder Lake processors were tested with a Noctua NH-U9S heatsink with dual fan configuration while using the Noctua NM-i17xx-MP78 mounting kit. With the i9-12900K pulling close to a 200 watt average, the average core temperature on air cooling was 81 degrees with a peak of 98 degrees. The Noctua U9S with dual-fan configuration was capable of cooling the i9-12900K a majority of the time, but there were rare instances of it approaching 100 degrees.

On the same CPU with the same test; U9S is about 6 warmer than D15 and about 3 warmer than D14.

Frostytech says U9S temps are about 23 above ambient for 150 watts and 13 above ambient for 85 watts.

12700k report on Tom's Hardware: with U9S; after running Heavyload, the max temp reached 88 celsius and sat around 87 for half an hour. I feel quite happy about that.

U9S temps typically 4 degrees warmer than U12S when under a 200 watt load per Frosty Tech.

U9S is about 19 degrees cooler than stock Intel cooler under load.

 

[geofelt]

Noctua maintains a list of suitable coolers.
Here is the list for the 12700F:
https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/Intel-Core-i7-12700F-1590

NH-U9s looks quite good.

What is the make/model of your case.
Case cooling is important.
Any cooler needs a good source of fresh air to let it do it's job.

Testing with an all core load like cinebench will not tell you what you need to know for gaming which uses only a few threads.

 

[Ethan Peffers]

Airflow on this case is actually surprisingly good. Both the top and front are almost completely ventilated with more ventilation at the back. It also has small holes on the side of the case near the cables (which probably provide no cooling effects but I guess it looks cool.) The model is the G15CF.

 

[geofelt]

If not already there, see if you can't mount a couple of front intake fans to help get heat our of the case quicker.

 

[Ethan Peffers]

Yep! I actually already did that. I put two Corsair LL120 case fans at the front of the case which blow directly on the cpu and GPU. I tried to mount a third at the top to the right of the CPU as an exhaust but I figured it wouldn't help as it would just be blowing out cool air front the fans in the front of the case since there was no space to the left where my other exhaust fan is at the top. I have positive pressure in my case with a 2:1 ratio.

 

[geofelt]

Yep; top exhaust fans may well be counter productive.

 

[Ethan Peffers]

Thanks for the help. To be honest, I think anything would be better than the stock fan they currently put in these computers. Also, as far as I know, the U9S is probably the best option considering the amount of space I have.