Noctua NH-P1, High-Performance Passive Fanless Silent CPU Cooler

The Noctua NH-P1 is an absolute masterpiece for anyone seeking true 100% silent computing. This passive CPU cooler delivers exactly what it promises—excellent thermal performance with zero noise, thanks to its fanless design. Build quality is exceptional. The massive heatsink, wide-spaced fins, and heat pipes are clearly engineered for efficient natural convection, and installation was straightforward with Noctua’s rock-solid mounting system. It fits perfectly without interfering with RAM or other components, which is impressive considering its size. In a well-ventilated case, it keeps my CPU running cool and stable under normal workloads while remaining completely silent. The included NT-H2 thermal paste and Noctua’s long warranty further highlight the premium experience. If you’re building a silent PC, home theater system, or noise-free workstation, the NH-P1 is worth every penny. Reliable, beautifully engineered, and utterly silent—this is Noctua at its best. Highly recommended.

When I bought this to replace my dying AIO, I assumed my temps would increase and I would have to upgrade somewhere down the road, but suprisingly my rig has gotten better temps since making the switch, and as advertised it was completely silent (cuz no moving parts, duh). The build quality is great and it was easy to install, and thankfully it was able to fit in my case despite the comically large size. Overall I've been very impressed with its performance, and I see myself using it well into the future!

amazing! using it on the amd 9900x... undervolted the chip, losing nominal speed but improving my thermals by ~10C. my tower looks like a pontiac firebird meets a mad scientist's reactor core...

Shipped with everything needed for installation. Once I installed on my Ryzen 5 1600 CPU I was able to get an overclock of 3.9 GHz easily with temps under a cinebench load hovering around the low 60s Celsius. I have since upgraded to a newer intel I3 10105F CPU, and temps under a typical gaming load have yet to exceed 60 degrees C! My case is a be quiet silent base 802 in the airflow configuration. As long as you have a larger case, mid or full size towers, with decent airflow I think this cooler will be very effective. I also have three be quiet 120 mm case fans always turning inside case, but all are tuned to stay at very low rpm generating little noise from two feet away. Also I know noctua doesn’t recommend my case for this cooler, but I think their estimates of what this can cool are very conservative. Great cooler just a little pricey as a more niche product.

We don’t have a ton of passive coolers on the market anymore, but I’m glad we have this one. The tolerances are tight, it’s easy to install, and it works much better than I expected. I’m running a 5800x3D in the same case as a 3080 ti. This isn’t the coldest running system, but this cooler has kept my cpu under 65 C while under load. I do have two Noctua fans in the front of my case that provide a small amount of airflow, but that seems to be more than enough in side of my NZXT 510. This case is notoriously bad with air flow, but this cooler handles it like a champ. Keep in mind that higher end chips with higher TDP will require a tower that has some sort of active airflow. If you’re looking at purchasing this cooler you should already know how to set your fan curves accordingly. If you plan on using this in tandem with a totally passive build proceed with caution when dealing with any cpu that has a TDP higher than 100 watts. It will run well for a while, but you will fall out of boost clocks when the cooler gets heat soaked. I’m a big fan of this cooler, because I can set my fan curve to keep my fans off under most light to moderate loads. This also has the added benefit of no moving parts. No fan to go bad, no pump to clog, and no water levels to maintain. I will be long gone before this cooler goes through enough heat/cooling cycles have an effect on performance.

Works like its supposed to - but its very big. Would not recommend for gaming or productivity work - basically its good for HTPC and people who need absolute SILENCE. Heat soaks quickly and if there are no other fans in the case, you will have thermal issues on high workloads.

I used this on my AMD Ryzen 9 5950x CPU. Idle temps are around 50C in a warm room with fan at 0%. Load of course will hit 85-90C. This cooler is NOT rated for the 5950x, however it unleashes about 90% of the capability of the CPU. Cinebench R23 yields around 27000 in multi and 1550 in single. The clocks in multi go to about 3.8-4.2GHz and in single go to 4.6GHz. The 5950x basically boosts to whatever it can given its thermal headroom. This cpu cooler really isn't the best for the 5950x, but you'll still get most of the performance most of the time. If you need to run the CPU at 100% all the time, this cooler is not for you. I'll update this review as my build progresses and I finalize numbers. Initial impressions is that Noctua did a spectacular job on this product. Highly recommend!

I bought this to build a 100% silent PC using an Intel Core i5-12600K CPU. It works much better than I expected. Although my initial plans were to buy a Core i5-12600T, I had so much trouble finding one that I decided to get a 12600K after realising it has the 4 efficiency cores, and manually limit the power. I started out limiting PL1/PL2/Tau to 40W/80W/40 sec, but I very quickly realised that I could run the CPU at the default power limits with only minimal overheating issues, so then I experimented with undervolting the CPU, and I have settled on a stable system using Adaptive voltage mode and an offset -135 mV. At these settings, I have been able to hit a Cinebench R23 multicore benchmark of 17513, with max power draw of about 100 W and a max CPU temp of about 87-88 C under sustained 100% load. My PC has no moving parts and is dead silent. 0 dBA SPL. This is the first time I've actually installed a CPU cooler from bare metal. All previous CPUs I've bought had the stock Intel cooler. Although I was a little nervous about getting the thermal paste right, it seems to be working perfectly on the first try. I'm using a Gigabyte Z690 UD AX DDR5 motherboard and a Thermaltake Core P3 chassis, with a Seasonic PX-500 fanless PSU.

Certes il est assez cher mais il pèse tout de même plus d'1kg d'aluminium. je voulais un PC 100%Inaudible car je suis hyper sensible aux bruits de ventillateurs. Il a donc demandé un choix éclairé des composants. Le site de Noctua est d'ailleurs un modèle du genre pour la compatibilité. J'ai choisi pour faire un pc 100% passif : +un ryzen 5600G pour se passer de carte graphique +une alimentation corsair RM750x semi passive .En dessous de 350w elle est passive et la configuration tire au max 160W, j'ai de la marge +Un boitier Fractal Meshify 2 Compact car conseillé par Noctua en conf 100% passive. +Une CM B550 avec de bon radiateurs sur les VRM (Gigabyte Elite v2) +Ram Corsair LPX 3600C18 car la moins cher vitesse/prix. Montage parfaitement documenté comme souvent avec Noctua Le NH-P1 a une comptabilité à 100% pour la RAM sur un socket AM4 car il ne couvre aucunement la RAM (voir photo) Résultat le CPU est à ~35° en iddle et 42° dans un jeu pas trop lourd. Le cpu monte à 70° au bout d'une boucle de cinebench R23 et redescend gentiment esuite. Un OCCT à 100% CPU/GPU le met un peu à mal (mais c'est normal il est pas prévu pour). Le cpu monte doucement à 95° (au bout de plus de 20 minutes de burn) et baisse légèrement de fréquence. Mais ça se stabilise. C'était attendu. J'ai ajouté un ventilo au dessus pour sortir la chaleur du boitier. Résultat même à 30-40% ventilo inaudible et CPU à 82° max. J'ai donc programmé le ventilateur pour se déclencher au dessus de 70° CPU et à l'arrêt sinon. J'obtient un pc 100% silencieux, avec des composant standards (pas de minipc, mini itx ou autre) qui sera donc évolutif avec des cpu de tdp de 65w ou moins. Merci Noctua pour ce produit atypique mais qui correspond bien à mon besoin.

Come tutti i prodotti Noctua, carissimi ma ottimi.

Dieser Lüfter ist eigentlich viel zu Schade, dass er in einem verschlossenen Gehäuse versteckt wird. Der größte CPU Lüfter den ich bisher gesehen habe. Er ist aber von den Abmessungen so konstruiert, dass er wirklich in die allermeisten Standardgehäuse passt. In einem Gaming Gehäuse mit Sichtscheibe macht er sich gut. Die Empfehlungen des Herstellers sollte man Ernst nehmen und bei den größeren CPU's ab INTEL I5, I7 oder I9, großer AMD RYZEN einen zusätzlichen Noctua Lüfter anbringen (oder auch zwei für Redundanz). Den Lüfter kann man übrigens auch nachträglich mittels Schnellmontagevorrichtung, ohne Schrauben !, montieren. Die Anleitungen zur Montage sind gut beschrieben und bebildert. Es wird im Prinzip alles für den Einbau mitgeliefert. Man sollte aber unbedingt vor dem Einbau prüfen ob die vorhandene Mainboard CPU Backplate (die Rückenplatte, die von hinten mit der CPU Halterung verschraubt ist) mit der mitgelieferten kompatibel ist !- Falls nicht muss man die CPU Halterung von hinten am Mainboard mit Kunststoff Unterlegscheiben und Muttern sichern. Die nervigen lauten CPU Lüfter Geräusche (aufheulen) bei Leistungsabruf gehören mit dem Lüfter auf jeden Fall der Vergangenheit an. Die Abmessungen des Lüfters sollte man vor dem Kauf prüfen ! Positiv ist noch hervorzuheben, dass es auch Montagematerial für nicht so gängige CPU Sockel (Server etc.) als Zubehör zu kaufen gibt. Der Lüfter ist eine Langzeitinvestition und daher sollte man alle mitgelieferten Teile aufheben. So lässt sich der Lüfter auch bei PC Wechsel mitnehmen. Ganz geräuschlos wird der PC nach dem Lüftereinbau nicht da in der Regel noch mindestens der Netzteil Lüfter (Grafikkarte/Gehäuse) bei Belastung zu hören ist. Passive PC Netzteile sind leider nicht verbreitet so dass der Traum vom lautlosen PC mit guter Leistung wohl erst einmal ein Traum bleiben wird. Der Lüfter ist kein Schnäppchen, gute Hardware kostet aber nun mal etwas ;-) - Von mir gibts aber trotzdem eine Kaufempfehlung :) weil es ein einfacher Weg ist die Laustärke spürbar zu reduzieren.

profiled the temps and it looks great. best still, no dust constantly getting sucked in. love it

Overall I am happy with this cooler. I find it aesthetically pleasing to have a massive cooler like this in my case. it comes with everything you need to install it including a full screwdriver to drive in the hex bits the mounting system uses, alcohol swabs to clean off old thermal compound, and new thermal compound which i used. my only complaint is with the customer service department I messaged in to ask if my case would fit the cooler because its a discontinued case and I needed clarification, they answered the question but ignored everything i said about my reasons for using the cooler. This cooler is obv not for everyone, it's meant to be used as a passive cooler, it needs to be installed in a case with excellent natural ventilation and it does not work for cpu's with high heat and tdp unless you plan on using the included fan mounts to attach a cpu fan. for my use case though it works really well and i'm happy with the result.