Noctua NH-P1, Passive CPU Cooler - Fanless Heatsink for 100% Silent Cooling

We don’t have a ton of passive coolers on the market anymore, but I’m glad we have this one. The tolerances are tight, it’s easy to install, and it works much better than I expected.I’m running a 5800x3D in the same case as a 3080 ti. This isn’t the coldest running system, but this cooler has kept my cpu under 65 C while under load. I do have two Noctua fans in the front of my case that provide a small amount of airflow, but that seems to be more than enough in side of my NZXT 510. This case is notoriously bad with air flow, but this cooler handles it like a champ.Keep in mind that higher end chips with higher TDP will require a tower that has some sort of active airflow. If you’re looking at purchasing this cooler you should already know how to set your fan curves accordingly.If you plan on using this in tandem with a totally passive build proceed with caution when dealing with any cpu that has a TDP higher than 100 watts. It will run well for a while, but you will fall out of boost clocks when the cooler gets heat soaked.I’m a big fan of this cooler, because I can set my fan curve to keep my fans off under most light to moderate loads. This also has the added benefit of no moving parts. No fan to go bad, no pump to clog, and no water levels to maintain. I will be long gone before this cooler goes through enough heat/cooling cycles have an effect on performance.

I bought this to build a 100% silent PC using an Intel Core i5-12600K CPU. It works much better than I expected. Although my initial plans were to buy a Core i5-12600T, I had so much trouble finding one that I decided to get a 12600K after realising it has the 4 efficiency cores, and manually limit the power. I started out limiting PL1/PL2/Tau to 40W/80W/40 sec, but I very quickly realised that I could run the CPU at the default power limits with only minimal overheating issues, so then I experimented with undervolting the CPU, and I have settled on a stable system using Adaptive voltage mode and an offset -135 mV. At these settings, I have been able to hit a Cinebench R23 multicore benchmark of 17513, with max power draw of about 100 W and a max CPU temp of about 87-88 C under sustained 100% load. My PC has no moving parts and is dead silent. 0 dBA SPL.This is the first time I've actually installed a CPU cooler from bare metal. All previous CPUs I've bought had the stock Intel cooler. Although I was a little nervous about getting the thermal paste right, it seems to be working perfectly on the first try. I'm using a Gigabyte Z690 UD AX DDR5 motherboard and a Thermaltake Core P3 chassis, with a Seasonic PX-500 fanless PSU.

This heat sink was exactly what I was looking for and it probably just comes down to personal preference for most. I honestly wish passive cooling was more prolific in the PC building world. I was trying to go for a quieter build and the stock AMD cooler is pretty loud and would fluctuate constantly. This keeps my average temps lower and less fluctuation. It fit in my case(Antec P180 mini) perfectly with my semi-passive setup. 3800X and 2070S. Noise and temps are lower plus no moving parts, which was worth $120 to me. I also like the look of it. No more stupid RGB.Update: upgraded to 5700X3D and 4070S. Noise and temps still superb.

Having already done a couple of water-cooled systems, and a couple of air cooled NH-D15 systems, I wanted to do something different. This thing is massive, and the heat pipes on the side look like Freddy Kreuger's claw is holding up this massive heatsink. It does exactly what it is supposed to: dissipate heat upwards with little to no assistance from fans. Paired with a properly ventilated case, it's a more than viable solution. I paired it with an I5-12600K that is not overclocked, and load temps are in the mid 70's. My computer has 5 fans that are truly "silent" meaning less than 7 decibels. A lot of fans are sold as "quiet" or "silent" that are banging out 19 db which is preposterous. Anyway, with minimal airflow this thing is working exactly as intended. It is not meant for high TDP processors, or high voltage, overclocked systems. I am probably going to undervolt my system at Intel stock clocks to bring down the temps a little bit. Noctua wins again.

Length of ownership: 3 years+. Works great on my silent PC i5-12500. Installation was straightforward, though it was a tight fit in my medium tower case.

Works great at passive cooling but I am in a bind looking for upgrades since the am5 mount that should have been included is missing

It's installed on a 13900K i9 in an open case with the noctua silent fan recommended by noctua. The temps get up to 75 celsius under load. I think if it was in an enclosed case with no fan it would go over 80 easily. As long as it doesn't go over 80 I feel it was worth it for the silence. My old heatsink and fan would ramp up an down and get annoying to listen to.

I used this to build a silent storage server with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G processor, and it works excellent. I combined it with a fanless power supply and SSD drives to make a completely fanless and motorless system. Normally the CPU temperature hovers around the 45-55c range, and during an AV1 video encoding task the temperature hovers in the upper 80c range, but doesn't get into the 90's. Now if I run the Linux "stress" command which maxes out all cores at 100% then the processor will gradually work its way up to 95C but not go past that. Of course the "stress" command doesn't represent a normal CPU load.Now there are a few things to be aware of. Since this is a storage server I don't have a video card in the system. Instead, I have a storage controller card and there is just enough room under the heat sink for it to fit, but it is very close. I also have the system in a large case with an open vent at the top. I believe the top vent is very important because I can hold my hand over it and feel heat from it. Also, make sure that your case is wide enough. The case that I am using had some plastic brackets on the side cover for mounting a side fan, and I had to remove those brackets for the side cover to fit.