Phanteks PH-TC12DX Review

Brand: Phanteks
Model: PH-TC12DX
RRP: £40 to £45 (At time of the review)

Since Phanteks began in 2007, they have brought us a lot high-end products which are loved amongst enthusiasts around the world today. Their first cooler, the PH-TC14PE was a fantastic cooler and flew off of the shelves everywhere due to its success. It will be difficult to outdo that cooler as it was excellent.

It’s the turn of the PH-TC12DX today which is a single towered cooler with push/pull fans as standard. The cooler and fans come in four different colours to add that extra bit of flexibility to the end user wanting a specific colour scheme. The colours are black, blue, red and silver so there is more or less a choice for everyone … you know, if you’re in the market for one of these. 

The cooler has a very admirable price tag of just £45 which includes two PWM fans as well. This is without doubt a very reasonable price as PWM fans are not cheap. However, the question we all want to find out is how it performs. So, lets take a quick look at the specifications list and then unbox this cooler.

The packaging in which the TC12DX comes in is rather minimalistic with its black and white design, but it does stand out and looks appealing to the eye. The box is absolutely loaded with information about the various technologies which Phanteks have patented. To name a few, there is the P.A.T.S patent which stands for Physical Antioxidant Thermal Shield which greatly increases the cooling performance by deflecting other thermal radiation from nearby objects such as graphics cards. Another of said technologies is the C.P.S.C feature which stands for Cold Plasma Spraying Coating Technology. C.P.S.C is a new technology which basically allows tiny particles of copper to form so that the conductivity between the fins and heat pipes is at its best.

Opening up the box reveals nothing but a white foam cover to ensure that the bits and bobs inside do not move around during shipment. However, underneath lays the cooler, fans and accessories so let’s take a look at those rather than a bit of white foam. So, inside you’ll see the cooler in the middle, surrounded by two fans and the accessories on the far right hand side of the box.

The accessories which come with this cooler are fairly limited to the Intel mounting system and the obvious fans which are included with this cooler. Amongst those accessories are the following components:

1x PH-TC12DX Heatsink
2x PH-F120HP PWM Premium Fans
8x Fan Clip Adapters
4x Rubber Bar
4x Fan wire clips (PH-F120HP Fan’s Accessories)
SoliSku Mounting Kits for Intel and AMD (Stock back-plate required)
1x Y Fan Splitter (4pin)
1x PH-NDC Thermal Compound
2x Phanteks PH-TC12DX User’s Manual

Phanteks offer this particular cooler in four different colours as mentioned in the introduction and obviously this is the blue variant of the cooler. Blue is one of my favourite colours and this cooler definitely looks the part in my eyes. Granted it won’t really fit in with many colour schemes on motherboards today, it is a nice looking cooler regardless.

There are four 6mm heat pipes on the PH-TC12DX which are, according to Phanteks, designed and placed in a linear fashion to ensure that they create minimalistic airflow disruption to aid the cooling performance.

The fans which come with this cooler are two of their premium PWM fans which have a white frame and blue fan blades. They look like quality fans and the braiding on the cables is fantastic. The cables are not visible through the braiding but it does help that they are white which is a nice touch and something I feel should be implemented on all fans with braiding.

When it comes to installing big and bulky coolers, it often involves installing a back plate with some form of mounting mechanism on the front of the board for the cooler to attach to. The Phanteks is no different and I’d say it is a good mounting system. By that, I mean it is easy to set up and get right the first time round.

Starting off with the back of the motherboard, there’s a bracket which has pre-drilled holes in the positions of the relative sockets. Locating them is easy enough and then it is a case of putting the rivet nuts into place and then it’s ready to go. After that, it’s a case of putting it into place and flipping the motherboard over to install the double ended screw nuts to lock the back plate into its final position and to allow you to install the next stage. The next part of the installation requires you to place four spacers over the rivet nuts to make the brackets sit in the correct position. After that, place the two brackets over the double ended screw nuts and spacers, which can be placed either vertically (as I’ve done) or horizontally if you wish. After that, it’s a case of installing a further four screw nuts to secure the two brackets.

After that, it’s a case of installing the bracket over the cooler and securing it into place with a screw nut. This is a little annoying to install if you have massive gorilla hands like myself but it is fine once it starts to grip on to the screw itself. It’s yet another fine example of how mounting kits should be made because it doesn’t swivel on its axis once it is mounted, unlike some other coolers out there.

Finally, installation is completed by applying thermal paste and then screwing down the cooler into the brackets which were previously mounted. That’s it, you’re done. It’s as simple as that.

We have reviewed a Phanteks cooler quite recently and it set the benchmark with regards to what we can expect from Phanteks. Needless to say that the PH-TC12DX was a brilliant cooler and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it actually performed. It also had a lot of other benefits such as its great mounting system and with that came the ease of installation. One other plus which may be of interest to many is the choice of colours. As mentioned previously, it comes in black, silver, blue and red with fans to match. All of the fans (as far as I am aware) have a white frame and the colour of the blades varies.

I would have to say that the mounting system for this cooler is well thought out, with the exception being that of the screw nut you have to install to mount one of the brackets to the cooler. If you have small hands, you shouldn’t have an issue fitting it. However, if you have gigantic gorilla hands like I do, you may struggle somewhat as it is a bit finicky to install. Other than that it was easy but I would have liked to see the inclusion of some rubber O-rings such as on the Megahalems to keep the screws in place whilst you’re trying to flip your motherboard over to install the remainder of the mounting system.

The performance which this cooler brought to the table was brilliant to say the least. At stock clocks of 3.9GHz on my 4770K, it was able to outperform the likes of the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme which is a phenomenal result. However, the SB-E quickly reclaimed its crown under the overclocked conditions, as you’d probably expect with its dual tower design and 2500RPM (+- 5%) 140mm fans.

Overall, I feel that the cooler is great value for money and I would highly recommend it to anyone. I think that it most definitely deserves a value award, and it scores very highly in our performance and design areas too. This cooler gets a double thumbs up from me. I’d personally like to use one in every build I do from now on simply for the performance it has to offer at its price point. If you have around £40 to £45 to spend on a cooler, and want the best performance in that bracket; this is the one.