Closer Look / Product Photos
The cooler arrived in a retail package which is a classic, white, black, and brown box.
As always, in the case of Noctua coolers, the box’s exterior has a full product specification, so we don’t have to check any details on the manufacturer’s website.
Inside the box, we will find everything we need for the installation, including the screwdriver. For the first time, we can see the NT-H2 thermal compound with the cooler as it was available for some time but as a separated product. I’m glad to see it in the package as it’s slightly better than the NT-H1, but every degree counts in the passive cooler case.
The package also includes AMD and Intel mounting kits, additional fan clips, and manuals.
The cooler itself is quite big. Let’s say it’s a bit smaller than the NH-D15 with fans. We can see that fins are much thicker and spaces between them are larger to let the air pass through easier. The large size doesn’t cause problems with tall RAM or other devices. We can always install it in another direction, and it fits even small ITX form factor motherboards. Noctua doesn’t recommend using ITX motherboards because everything is packed on a smaller surface and accumulates heat more than on a larger ATX motherboard. However, we tested the NH-P1 cooler on the MSI Z590I Unify and confirmed that this motherboard works well.
We also don’t recommend installing the NH-P1 cooler in PC cases with limited airflow. The whole list of tested PC cases is on the Noctua website.
To help with the airflow, we can use an additional fan. Recommended is Noctua NF-12×25 LS-PWN because of nearly silent work and high air pressure at even low speed. This fan is also stopping when the CPU load is low. As far as I love these Noctua fans, then anything with RGB looks great spreading the light between fins.
Below you can see how the NH-P1 looks on the MSI Z590I Unify motherboard which we will use for tests. Noctua said it’s not recommended to use an ITX motherboard, so, of course, we had to check that. The only issue which you may see in the last photo is that the CPU socket is a bit too close to the IO panel, and it wouldn’t be possible to install this setup in some PC cases.
We will show you how the NH-P1 performs with the i7-11700K processor on the next page.
