Core i7 8700K baseline test

Core i7 8700K baseline test

Time for the essence of this review. The Noctua NH-U12A should be more than enough for the range of CPUs from the Pentium to the Core i7 hexa-core, or even the Core i9 octa-core. We ran the test at the default frequencies, but there should still be some room left for OC. First up is the IDLE temperature, measured when the CPU does next to nothing, just waiting for any action by the user.

Then there are LOAD temperatures, 100% usage of the CPU was generated by WPrime 2.10 (3x 1024M). The ambient temperature was about 22-23 degrees C, which does affect cooling performance for sure, but we tested all the previous coolers in similar conditions. You don’t want the CPU to go above 75-80 degrees at default frequencies, otherwise, you can surely assume that your cooler is doing a very poor job. On the next page, we’ll show you how silent this cooler is.