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Teaming up with Noctua we are going to be taking a bit of shift today off of the main-stream AiO liquid cooler you are used to seeing and trying out something a little different, a low-profile air cooler.
The NH-L12S is a product name that could you a little improving but we are looking forward to seeing what this CPU cooler has in store for us.
Packaging, Contents, and Pricing
Arriving in packaging that we consider “retail-ready”, meaning the product is in a more appealing outfit rather than basic vanilla cardboard we see many chassis’ arrive in, you don’t really get a look at the cooler itself. 
A white box and brown glossy box with the product name repeated as well as a list of a main features of the product we would really like to see a large photo of the NH-L12S on the front.
On the port side of the box you’ll get a a detailed description of each of these features. You also get a small look at the product itself but still a large colour picture always helps when you’re walking by it on a shelf and it grabs your interest.
The NH-L12S has two setup modes, which make up the necessity for this cooler; low-profile mode as well as high-clearance mode give you diversity and choice within a small form factor cooler.
Included in your purchase is mounting equipment for Intel LGA 115X, 2011(0-3) and 2066. AMD, up to AM4 is also supported, which makes this cooler as diverse as it is stylish. A low-noise adapter, thermal paste and a manual for each style of mounting accompany the main unit as well as the NF-A12x15 slim, 120mm premium fan.
At the time of this review the NH-L12S is available on amazon for $49.90, Click here!
Features, Specs, and Setup
The main features of the NH-L12S are it’s dual position fan which allow for either high clearance of ram and chipset coolers or low-profile mode which make it only 70mm tall.
The low-noise adapter takes the max RPM’s down to 1400 from 1850 claiming a max acoustical noise of 16.8 dB/A (23.9 dB/A without).
Other pertinent specs related to the NH-L12S are mostly related to the included fan which are a max airflow of 94.2 m3/h and as previously mentioned it’s max RPM of 1850.
Installation of the cooler was fairly simple, however with our mini-ITX, Asus Strix 270I motherboard and Viper Elite RAM, we could only install the fan in the high-clearance mode. 
This was slightly disappointing as we figure such a small form factor cooler would be more suited for mini-ITX builds. We compared this to how it would fit on one of our ATX boards, the extra space would have given enough room and the ram would have just been off to the side enough that it would fit either way.
One thing we will advise is to make sure that you have all connections that will be under the cooler hooked up before installation of the main unit itself. We learned this the hard way as trying to manipulate the area underneath trying to reach a fan connector, post-installation.