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Phanteks PH-TC12DX
Phanteks offers its PH-TC12DX cooler in blue, red or black in addition to the white version that we saw – which retails at £38.99. In fact there is a fair amount of aluminium on show so it would be more accurate to describe the cooler as white and silver.
The painted finish on the cooler body looks good and the fans and cables are also white to give a colour match.
The layout of the cooler is quite conventional, however it has been designed with some neat details that work well. Let's start with the installation instructions which are noteworthy as four separate sheets are supplied with different languages (English, Chinese, Japanese and German). This makes them much easier to understand than the usual multi-language instructions.
For an AMD motherboard you use the stock back plate, then install the side rails, spacers and screws and after that you fix the cooler body in place. You need to remove the motherboard from your case to make life easier.
Moving on to the mainstream, for LGA115x you install a back plate with four studs that have with hex heads that prevent the studs from rotating. Slip on some spacers and two side rails and lock the whole lot together with four nuts. Once the cooler has been screwed down you can clip on the two fans with their captive wire clips. There is a Y cable in the pack of accessories so you can hook the two fans up to a single header. It is a good, logical way of doing things.
Specification
| Intel LGA115x support | Yes |
| Intel LGA1366 support | Yes |
| Intel LGA2011 support | Yes |
| Intel LGA775 support | Yes |
| AMD AMx/FMx support | Yes |
| TDP rating | Not given |
| Base of cooler | Copper |
| Heat sink | Aluminium tower |
| Heatpipes | 4 x 6mm heatpipes |
| Supplied fans | 120mm PH-F120HP |
| PWM | Yes |
| Fan speed | 600rpm-1,800rpm |
| Fan bearings | Updraught Floating Balance |
| Air flow | 23cfm-69cfm |
| Noise levels | 21.9dBA-27.6dBA |
| Dimensions | 157mm (H) x 107mm (W) x 126mm (D) |
| Weight | 880g |
| Warranty | Five years |
Product Shots
Testing
The Phanteks PH-TC12DX almost kept up with the epic Deepcool Assassin II and only fell a handful of degrees behind on our AMD CPUs. The overclocked Core i7-4820K ran at the same 62 degrees on both the Phanteks and Deepcool coolers which is pretty impressive.
One difference is that the Phanteks fans operated in the range of 1,500rpm to 1,800rpm when the CPU was loaded at 100 percent. The fans were nice and quiet at low speed but were audible when they were running near their maximum speed.
KitGuru Says: Phanteks has supplied a quality cooler for less than £40 and it performs superbly well.
Score: 9 out of 10
Buy from Overclockers UK for £38.99 inc vat HERE.
KG, how could you not include the Noctua D15 in this roundup? Commonly known to be the best performer of the moment….
This..
It wasnt missed, this isnt meant to be a roundup of every high end cooler, many of which we have already reviewed. This is a look at an unusual selection of coolers that most people have missed. Its a little ‘off beat’ intentionally.
Yes, but more to the point it could have been used as a baseline to compare others relative performance 🙂
I’m happy not to have the D15 in as it’s price is very much a barrier to using it (as well as the weight!) – it’s good to see focus on other makes such as Cryorig.
Not a valid test of anything without a Noctua NH D15 at least as a baseline.