I'm upgrading from a Ryzen 3600 to a 5800X3D and I'm considering getting the U12A to cool it, because the Chromax version will look really nice with my black and white build, especially with the white heatsink covers. However the massive price tag is making me think twice because there are coolers that literally cost a third of the price but perform better according to benchmarks. Please convince me that the U12A will be worth it, especially since it costs half the price of the CPU itself.

As the tital says, iv been runing the new cooler for a day now and with my 5800x with PBO enabled i was getting 5Ghz on some cores at 68c.

Now with the new cooler im not getting as high boosts and the temps are now 71c.

Any idea what this could be?

https://www.pcbuildersclub.com/en/2019/03/the-all-new-noctua-nh-u12a-tested-compact-high-performance-expensive/

I had access to both the U12S and U12A for testing. I could not find information on the actual heatsink difference between the two in terms of performance and wanted to test it.

CPU: 5950X (C.O -25)

MOBO: Asus Strix B550A (Fmax Enhancer OFF)

Ram: 32GB 3200mhz Cl16

GPU: RTX 3080 FE

Room Ambient Temp 21C

Test used Prime 95.

Test to See Heatsink Difference - Fans at max speed.

U12S Heatsink w/ 2x NF-A12x25s 76C

U12A Heatsink w/ 2x NF-A12x25s 74.6C

Noise Normalized Test 40dba

U12S Heatsink w/ 2x NF-A12x25s 85.2C (1498rpm)

U12A Heatsink w/ 2x NF-A12x25s 84.1C (1490rpm)

TL;DR

Depending on pricing, NH-U12S with 2 NF-A12x25 is the same price as NH-U12A and maybe a better value (at least it is in Canada) since you get a free NH-F12, NH-U12A heatsink marginally better than NH-U12S with at most 2C diff.

Edit: I also tested the heatsinks with NF-F12, no difference was found less than 0.5C diff and can be attributed to run to run variation.