Q6600 w/ Noctua NF-P12-1300 fan

Where here at Hardware Canucks feel it is out duty to provide you with as many answers as possible and the very fact that it is downright fun modding things has nothing to do with us going “above and beyond”….honest….trust us! Whether you believe us or not, one question I am sure many of you are asking themselves about this cooler has to do with that fan. Lets face it, on a cooler that costs as little as this one does, the fan is always going to be suspect (i.e. “how much better would it be if it had a really good fan”). In order to answer this question we yanked the NF-p12-1300 fan that came with the Noctua cooler we recently reviewed and stuck that bad boy onto the Xigmatek to see what would happen. Here is what we found out.


While the fan that comes with this unit is decent, when you pair this down right amazing cooler with a great fan the results are even better. At stock speed it dropped temperatures by an average of 1.7°C and at maximum overclock it dropped it by a full 2.3°C. This is pretty impressive as the standard configuration numbers are pretty good; however spending $12 to $20 for a Noctua NF-P12-1300 fan (or 38% - 63% of the 1283s cost) does seem pretty excessive.