Quality of Noctua products is unparalleled in terms of cooling systems, and they offer a large variety of their products. Their products fulfill the needs of most of the customers, and three models that we’re about to review confirm that. At first look, they are very similar, even their designations are nearly the same, but their purposes are different. Their designations are as follows: NF-A14 ULN, NF-A14 FLX and NF-A15 PWM.

Innovation in the cooler domain doesn’t really happen that often in the proper sense of the word. The copper base/parts were certain advancement, as were the heatpipes that were added later on. The Peltier cooling method may have been the greatest innovation at one point, but it turned out to be a dead end for commercial viability, with the few Peltier-based coolers that actually launched receiving a lukewarm welcome on the market. Vapour chamber was the next step, and although it’s nothing more than a modified, bloated heatpipe, it managed to become very popular. However, it was also a clear indication that not much is going to change in the cooler world for some time, with most companies working on perfecting the existing design rather than developing a new one. Cooler Master have decided to at least cause a crack in the mould if not entirely break it, with their latest model called TPC 800, which is the first to bring a vertical vapour chamber.

Cooler Master has designed Hyper 612S as a CPU cooler with very good performance, but not at the expense of noise, or better yet silence. The cooler arrived in the recognisable packaging, containing the usual mounting clips for all CPU sockets, as well as a detailed manual, which is something that we always salute. Besides that, there was also room for a decent thermal paste, rubber buffers used when mounting the cooler to an AMD socket, and an extra set of plastic fan holders and the accompanying rubber buffers, so that the amount of vibrations is reduced to the minimum.