The excessive residual stress induced by quenching in steels will easily result in distortion and failure of parts. In order to obtain the more suitable quenchant, quenching process of Cr12MoV steel with different mediums involving water and oil are simulated, respectively. In present paper, the influence of nonlinear surface heat transfer coefficient, thermodynamic parameters and latent heat are considered comprehensively. The distribution of temperature, microstructure, hardness and residual stress after quenching for Cr12MoV steel are simulated by DEFORM finite element software. According to the results mentioned above, the variations of each field of the steel are analyzed.