A few points to Tom’s Hardware Noctua SFF Cooler Round Up:
The Noctua L9x65 along with the L12S and L12 Ghost Edition each include 2 sets of mounting bars for AMD sockets to allow the CPU cooler to be rotated in 90 degree increments to ensure the cooler heat pipes are not mounted with the “U” of the heat pipes facing downwards on vertically mounted motherboards as per Noctua installation guidelines.
The L9x65 cooler is cleverly designed so that the single pair of fan clips can affix either the A9x14 or A9x25 fan to the CPU cooler – the A9x25 fan raising the cooler height to 76mm. The A9x25 fan has a maximum 2000 RPM and has no noticeable whine that can be noted compared to that of the 2500 RPM A9x14 fan.
The Noctua L12 Ghost Edition (GE) cooler is equipped with the older lower performance 1600 RPM B9x25 fan. Replacing the B9 fan with the 2000 RPM A9x25 will significantly improve its cooling performance with no change in cooler height of 66mm. Strangely however, Noctua includes their higher performance NTH-2 thermal paste instead of the NTH-1 included with all of the other coolers. I believe the article is wrong regarding the heat pipe length of this cooler. The L12GE is 4mm lower in height than the L12S, but the heat pipes on the L12GE extend 4mm further out from the rear of the cooler. The L12GE is also 20 grams heavier than the L12S. Not much, but more mass is more mass. Noctua will also provide fan clips for a 120x25mm top mounted fan at no charge with proof of purchase of the L12GE.
My suggestion is if you intend to use the A12x15 fan, purchase the L12S – you have everthing you need at either 70mm or 85mm in cooler height.
If you intend to use an A12x25 fan, purchase the L12GE, order the free fan clips, pay for an additional 120x25mm fan with a cooler height of 91mm. As to using the L12GE in a dual fan configuration, I would not bother as I replaced the B9 fan with an A9x25 and mounted an A12x25 top fan in dual downdraft mode with both fans having a matching maximum 2000 RPM. After considerable testing, the addition of the lower A9x25 fan at most reduced the temperature by 1C at the cost of additional higher pitched noise than that caused by the 120mm fan.
I think both the D9L and the L9x65 coolers are best suited to slightly larger cases with at least one additional case fan for cooling motherboard components.
For extremely small cases with no space for a case fan, I believe most builds will be better served by a 120mm downdraft cooler providing airflow to other motherboard components. With all of the downdraft coolers, remember to have enough space above the cooler/fan to eliminate fan intake noise and not smother the airflow to the CPU.
As to competitive coolers, I would look at the Thermalright AXP120-67 for a smaller downdraft cooler
https://smallformfactor.net/forum/t...right-axp120-x67-noctua-l12-ge-coolers.17908/,
or for larger, the Thermalright SI-100
I purchased the Thermalright SI100 CPU cooler and decided to compare its cooling performance against the Noctua L12 Ghost Edition both fitted with a variety of 120x25mm fans. Without a fan mounted, the Thermalright SI-100 at 74.8mm, is 8.8mm taller than the Noctua L12 GE at 66mm. As a reminder...
smallformfactor.net
