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for years Noctua has sat basically unchallenged as the king of air coolers

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but as they say cost noise and performance

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pick two their products have never been well

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budget-friendly at least until now

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meet Noctua's first foray into a value

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line of CPU coolers it's a trimmed down

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version of the excellent nhu 12s called the nhu 12s redux

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but do the cost savings correspond to a big drop in performance

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historically Noctua has never let us down but just to be sure

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we did the math just like ridge wallet did the math on a

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10 discount and free worldwide shipping using offer code Linus for one of their

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great tradition busting compact and rfid blocking wallets check them out down

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below

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if someone were to ask me what's the best bang for the buck CPU cooler i

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would say well your stock cooler because literally anything over zero is going to

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be infinite bang for the buck if you ask for best in class however the

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nhu 12s is a standout

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and not because i'm some kind of fanboy it's just time and time again it's

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proven to be reliable quiet and performant

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there are cheaper options like the ever popular hyper 212 series but if you want

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the full package this is where it's at and the new redux version

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definitely makes some compromises giving you just what you need and not a lick

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more think you might upgrade your CPU down the line

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be ready to shell out for a tube of thermal paste because the pre-applied

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nth-1 on the redux is a one-shot deal extra fan clips gone why splitter and

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low noise adapters they're gone too everything extraneous has gotten the axe

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and removing parts from the box isn't all they've done in fact the cooler

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itself is completely different one of the five heat pipes has been dropped out

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right and the soldering step that bonds those pipes to both the thin stack and

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to the copper cold plate has been issued to keep costs under control

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this absolutely will reduce the thermal transfer capacity i mean think about it

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logically dropping 20 of your heat pipes can't be good for performance

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and neither can downgrading your fan

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although that one might not end up being a huge

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problem when the first redux fans came out my biggest complaint was that while

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they saved on cost and looked great in a gray on gray color scheme there was no

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pressure optimized 120 millimeter version

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fortunately that's been rectified with the new nfp12 redux the p is for

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pressure and it runs it up to 1700 RPM

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so that extra 200 rip hims should help make

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up some ground in terms of performance but will almost definitely come at the

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cost of more noise and here's why

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to hit this lower price point not to cut some corners primarily by using their

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older sso bearing design instead of the current sso2

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sso stands for self-stabilizing oil pressure bearing which essentially means

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that the fan center shaft rotates in pressurized oil with that pressure being

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generated by the rotation of the fan itself so fundamentally it's an oil

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supported sleeve bearing with some bonus magnetic axial support

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sso2 is an evolution that mostly improves the startup characteristics of

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the fan which happens to be where most of the wear occurs because the oil

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hasn't had time to pressurize yet once they're up and running though the

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differences should be minimal also absent is the inner surface micro

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structure in the frame although the trailing edges of the blades do get

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their vortex control notches which is great because while they don't actually

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reduce the amount of noise the fan makes they shift the pitch someone that isn't

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as annoying to the year thankfully the install experience of the redux is

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exactly what i've come to expect from Noctua secufirm still makes everything

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else feel cheap and confusing by comparison and another bonus that you

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might not actually know about is that if you want to upgrade your current system

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to the latest and greatest in the future you can

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you'll probably have to cover shipping costs but Noctua will send out new

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mounting hardware free of charge if your old knock to a cooler won't fit your new

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build which by the way is going to be a

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lot of their customers with both Intel and AMD set to change sockets for the

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next generation but which one should you buy

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to find out we pitted a chromax black u12s against one of the new redux units

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over a 20 minute blender render with a steady 150 watts of load generated by a

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core i7 8700k and

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surprisingly both of them performed essentially the same with our results

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falling into our margin of error of one to two degrees

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when we added a second fan to each cooler the temps dropped two to three

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degrees as we expected because we're

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good boys and red knocked to his literature ahead of time

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as a wee aside by the way the anti-vibration bumpers in the kit are

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extra thick for some reason this spaces the fan off of the fins by about five

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millimeters and we don't know exactly why at first we thought it could be

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something to increase flow through the cooler but our performance numbers

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didn't give us any conclusive answer so i suspect that it's an acoustic choice

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speaking of acoustics that is where the meat of this

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comparison lies we tested every possible permutation of fans single and dual as

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well as measuring from both the intake and exhaust sides and the results at

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idle show both coolers performing the same within .1 decibels

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wow Noctua's quiet reputation holds up

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perfectly as expected however when the going gets tough the redux's

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fan's higher speed makes its presence known with a 5 decibel increase in

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output now if you watched our previous chromax black video

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check that out if you haven't by the way we explained that decibels are a

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logarithmic value not a linear one which means that five decibels equates to

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about a forty percent increase in perceived volume so it is definitely

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noticeable but in low to moderate workloads you

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probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference perhaps you could use the

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savings to invest in a gaming headset with excellent noise isolation or if you

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already have one of those some sweet tech gear from lttstore.com where does

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that leave us then for noise a little worse that's definitely the low

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light of this product but it only shows up when you're really

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pushing things to the limit and with nearly a 30 savings in cost for almost

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the same performance it is pretty easy to recommend that is

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as long as you're not overvolting your CPU so in conclusion we don't review

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coolers very often these days but we felt that this one was both important

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and interesting enough to get the full treatment and i'm glad we did because

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it's going to make a lot of bang for the buck system builders extremely happy

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just like our sponsors going to make me and you both happy

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forward slash Linus well that's it for this look at Noctua's

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first budget conscious cooler uh finally there's a cheap option to get their

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excellent hardware into your system if you guys enjoyed this video and you're looking for something else to watch

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let's go to the polar opposite end of the spectrum where we did a build guide

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in a case that has an integrated phase change cooler

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so here's your budget that's your not so budget

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but a sub-zero sub-zero wins