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Impressive results in this review. About 2,5 db less at the same thermals as d15.
And same thermal performance at max rpm but still 2,5 db lower noise.
A12x25 also have better subjective noise at the same db as A15.

We have a new reference cpu-cooler for low noise enthusiasts!

So.... i finished, kindoff, i did all the testing, aside from the hearing session, sadly both days had rain in the night making not so quiet or at least the levels that i wanted to test, so maybe some other day ill do it, for now its postpone, as i cant do today nor a weekday because of work, but will see.

First let me say, all the coolers are really good coolers, its not like there is one that its not worth it or that loses severely, all of these coolers will cool most of today's CPUs fine. But do remember, the testing has been done on a delided i7 8086k with custom ihs + liquid metal, this dropped its load max temps around 15C, also take into account that the CPU is only running @ 4.3hz on Aida64, this is intentional or i wouldn't have been able to test lower rpms to compare between fans/heatsinks. So lets go with each cooler into what they excel into,

Noctua NH-D15s
Imo its the best cooler that was tested, but best in what... well its the one that netted the lowest temps and if you use two fans, it can even cool at very low rpms very well. While its an expensive cooler as it is, its very versatile in terms that it can do low and high rpms, downsides its size and weight, in some scenarios you wont be able to mount the frontal fans, specially if you don't go with standard size ram, still this is my top pick of the bunch.

Noctua NH-U12A
I was disappointed at first, as it struggle with low rpm, but its not meant for it, if you see the charts on high rpms it matches or gets close to the NH-D15s on 50/100% PWM, given that the rpms are different, the noise imo its comparable (take it with a grain of salt). The cooler does need the two fans, specially at low rpms, with a single fan was the only cooler that didnt finish the 30min min test out of me fearing it will hit 100c+. The problem with it is that its expensive, more than NH-D15s and HR22, but i do think it has a place/use, for a smaller cooler it cools well on higher rpms, and the Mugen5 cant touch it here, not even with the same fans, so if i was to air cool a 8700k/9900k or alike, and i couldnt fit a NH-d15s or dont like big coolers, then this is as good as it gets.

Thermalright HR22
This is a cooler that many avoid due to its size, but thats whats gives its place in the market, its by far the best low rpm performer of the coolers that were tested, specially with 1 fan win everything, but the NH-D15s performs well here with 2 fans. As with the Mugen5, the HR22 is a widly spread fin design allows this low airflow efficency, but gets better because of its size, it outpeforms the Mugen easily, so you are very likely to be able to plan a fan curve much lower than any other cooler that was tesed, the downside are two, size/weight and the price.... the LeGrandMacho is as expensive as the NH-D15 (none s, that comes with 2 fans) and the chart shows with 2 fans it outperforms on low rpm operation, but as with the Mugen5, it has diminishing returns on high rpm operation, while the NH-D15 perform very well here. So its a niche product, this cooler imo should be priced at $60 to be called the best for us, but at $80 is hard to recommend over the NH-D15, now if you are like me and want the S version because of the PCIe slots, then HR22 picks up its value, as you will need to add another NF-A15 to perform similar to the HR22, taking it to $100, more if you dislike Noctua colors and end up with Chroma NF-A15, where the LeGrandMacho sits at $80 and comes with an attractive and good performing fan. For people wanting more cooling than what the Mugen5 gives and want to remain on low rpms and cant use a twin tower with twin fans (like none standard height memory), this is as good as it gets.

Sythe Mugen5 RevB
I'm going to call this the jewl of the test, it didn't win any but did well in all, and it cost almost half of all the coolers that were tested, and it will remain my top recommendation for SPCR users for its performance/value. The Mugen5 is a cooler that its not meant for high rpm fans, its fin spacing is wider than U12A, more similar to a mini HR22, and thus the test reflect this, on low rpms it wins over the NH-U12A (true on 1 and 2 fan), but once it goes into above 1200rpms it struggles and U12A performs better. But you see, Scythe included a 1300rpm for this reason, there are diminishing return on using a high rpm fan on this cooler, and shines a lot on its range of operation. It was interesting to see how well it perform on the 15% compared to U12A, but the same can be said where it pulls ahead U12A on 2100rpms, but because of what we try to achieve here on SPCR, the Mugen5 imo its a better buy, not only because of its price, but also we are very unlikely to use a cooler above 1200rpms. Now if price is not a concern, then both the HR22 and NH-D15s perform much better, this leads me to the begging, its a great cooler that perform well in most tests, specially at low rpms, but what makes it so good its price/performance.

Is it worth buying the NF-A12x25 for the Mugen5? depends, initially i would say no, the Kamaflex performs well and the range of operation of the fan matches the ideal operation of the Mugen5 design, remember the only thing that the Mugen5 wins is on value, adding a $30 fan will place it in the NH-D15/HR22 price range. I would recommend to start with the kamaFlex, see from there if you want a quieter fan (NF-A12x25 under the same rpms is quieter, to what i remember around 100rpm or so nets same noise subjectively), another scenario would be in case you want lower rpm operation, the kamaflex can't be stopped even at 0% PWM it nets 400rpms (at least on gigabyte PWM bios fan control) so if you wish to stop the CPU fan under certain temps then get the NF-A12x25, or another scenario that i would suggest is if your kamaflex is showing its age and you want to change it, i would make the effort toward the NF-A12x25.

Awesome tests and analysis. Thanks for doing the work

I didn't expected the Mugen 5 doing that well at low speed, and even less the KamaFlex outperforming the A12X25 at low speed. Thanks you for the awesome work and your time

EDIT: You said on the A12X25 thread:

So even if the Mugen 5 achieves lower temps at lower speed, if we ever did a curve with the noise vs temps the A12X25 has much more dynamic in term of min/max cooling at lower noise than the Kama Flex. I think I made my choice, thanks again for all your work.

my kama flex fan that was included with the mugen 5 started (or maybe always had) a little bit of bearing/motor noise. it was pretty unobtrusive and most people probably wouldn't notice it, but it bugged me enough to slap an a12x25 on there.

thanks for testing. looks like I’m better off delidding my 8700k than swapping my heatsink if I want better thermals. I’d probably get the u12a over the mugen if I didn’t already have it, but that’s mostly because I love those fans. I did briefly have a mobo the used the first pci-e slot where there was conflict with the mugen’s fan clip and the gpu backplate, though some zip ties worked well enough.

next time you find yourself bored when it’s quiet, let us know how you think the a15 amd a12 compare!

Abula, your guess...

Which is better on performance per quality of noise, Noctua NH-U12A or Scythe Ninja 5 with a couple of Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM in replacement?

I think the Ninja5 would perform in between the Mugen5 and HR22, since its a bigger cooler than the Mugen5 but not as big as the HR22, spacing on the Ninja4 was similar (not sure on Ninja5), now value wise, i dont think its worth upgrading the fan, it will cost your almost twice as much very near what the U12A, which is even more than the HR22. The issues to chose a cooler with an unlimited budget and dont care what you spend,
1) If you are cooling something extremly hot like the 9900k i would go NH-D15s, on load you wont be able to drop the rpms, the CPU on high load will need the cooling, the U12A would be similar, but you lose the low rpm performance.
2) If you are cooling something easier like a delided 8700k then i would go with the mugen5, you will be able to drop the rpms since it doesnt need as much cooling and you will be spending a lot less. The ninja should be slightly better, but i dont think it will reach HR22 performance on low rpms. But upgrading the fan on either will push them above the NH-D15S which to me its the best cooler, so i dont see the point, specially thinking that Ninja5 overlaps with memory so there is no reason the NH-D15s will not fit there.

@lb_felipe while i was checking other stuff, i stumble on a very nice review on youtube, that has lot of things that i like to see on reviews, specially noise/temperature graphs, take them with a grain of salt as probably him as me, dont have an Anechoic chamber, that said it does look pretty impressive quiet cooler,

ponchato The QUIETEST Cooler I Have EVER Used!

The only thing that i dont understand, is from what i know, they used the same fan as the Mugen5, and two fans will be louder than one, so why is the noise graph reflecting the ninja5 as quieter than mugen5, to the graph should have shown a cooler running ninja5 but the noise should be slightly higher than the mugen5, then it could been error on his part or he didnt ramp the fans, who knows. Either way, seems like a very nice cooler, im probably going to order one in june to compare to the HR22 and NH-D15 (sadly the NH-U12A and Mugen5 are already in use), i still think its going to be tight with the 3 of them, as all have massive areas of dissipation and perform well on low rpms, ill probably will try it with NF-A12x25 just to see how it does, still dont think its worth the extra $60 over using the kazaflex, but will see.

So a friend had their intel cooler break down on Sunday, and ask me if i could get him a cooler that wasn't so expensive and heavy, so suggested the Scythe Kotetsu II $39.99, he liked it specially since it matches his ASUS TUF H370-Pro Gaming board, and the cooler just arrived to the office.

Probably wont be able to test much, as he is picking it up tomorrow, but will see what i manage, maybe just with the NF-A12x25 to compare it to the Mugen5, the fan included should be the same, just with RGB.

The white blades might be a different plastic composition than the std. black..and might lead to different performance. Hopefully, not.

"The only thing that i dont understand, is from what i know, they used the same fan as the Mugen5, and two fans will be louder than one, so why is the noise graph reflecting the ninja5 as quieter than mugen5"

The fans are not exacltly the same model according to Scythe web site.

I didn't have the time that i expected due to family issues, but i tried to do the best that i could with what time i had left with the Kotetsu II, the testing was done on the same motherboard, same cpu (same clocks), same thermal paste, only difference is the ambient temp was a little cooler, so take that into account before judging the differences in performance. Overall the cooler is pretty solid, for $40 the performance is very comparable to the Mugen5, all with in margin of error, for the most part very even.

awesome

Reviewed at TechPowerUp: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Noctua/NH-U12A/

Looks like scythe upgraded the fans for the FUMA 2, opting for one kaze flex and one of their new slim versions. Same (or better?) ram clearance than the u12a, $60 on us newegg. Seems like a direct competitor to the new Noctua

Full details of the Fuma 2 are on the Scythe US web site. One interesting point: the fans rotate in opposite directions. Scythe call it Reverse Jet Flow and claim that "...this generates higher static pressure as well as stable airflow thus pushing (t)he performance to the max...".

The Fuma2 seems a very interesting cooler, specially thinking on how dual fan helps low rpm operation, the only thing that i dont like on it is the frontal fan is a slim 120, so if it goes bad... and not sure you can place a standard 120 on it, the clip seems shorter from the pictures, but its not a big deal either, Noctua also has the NF-A12x15 that should work if you need to replace it down the road in case scythe dont sell their slim 120.