X-bit labs

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Processor Cooler Review

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 12/17/2007 | 04:10 PM ]

The new processor cooling solution is not setting any records, but it will undoubtedly attract the attention of those of you, who care a lot about price-to-efficiency ratio. Read all the details about this solution in our new review!

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• Design and Functionality
  
• Installation Tips
  
• Technical Specifications and Price
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Thermal and Acoustic Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

Try to answer a question to yourself: what criteria you take into account when choosing an air-cooler for your system CPU? Trust me, there will be a lot of different answer variations including efficiency, noise level, price, universality of the design, compatibility with mainboards, weight, convenience of installation, availability in the market. Even exterior looks of the solutions may be among those criteria, some people do care about the way the cooler looks. Even assuming that I missed something out, all those factors listed above may be more than enough to understand that there is simply no cooler out there that could please the user in all those aspects.

Subjectively, the well-known Thermaltake Big Typhoon may be the closest to ideal here, namely its recent modification with the VX index. But again, only close to ideal, but not ideal just yet. And the most interesting thing is that none of the cooler manufacturers are really trying to build a solution like that. It may seem a pretty evident and easy task to combine all the advantages of the existing cooling solutions and put together an impeccable product. However, there are such obstacles as patents, marketing, distribution market sharing and other things that have nothing to do with overclocking at all. Even the Chinese market where you can see numerous clones of European cars cannot yet boast anything like that either. All in all, I have every reason to say that we may never see a cooler like that.

Well, let’s not veer away from this slightly out-of-topic introduction and get to the actual hero of our today’s test session. The well-known Cooler Master Company seems to have had enough of fun with image solutions like Sphere already (see our article called Originality or Efficiency 2: Cooler Master Sphere CPU Cooler Review), so now they started to finally move into the right direction by enhancing their remarkable Hyper TX 2 cooler and launching a new Hyper 212 cooler afterwards. This will be the main character of our today’s discussion – Cooler Master Hyper 212.

Package and Accessories

The new cooling system comes in a large box with a window in the front that shows some of the cooler inside. It is marked with the cooler model name and a few icons standing for supported processor types:

The back of the package is much more informative. Cooler pictures, the list of its key features, brief description of its technical specifications – all this you can get from the Cooler Master Hyper 212 box.

Inside the carton box there is a transparent plastic casing shaped precisely around the cooler for more secure hold:

This packaging allows to minimize the risk of damaging the cooler during transportation or shipping. I would like to specifically draw your attention to this fact, because we all know that delivery people may sometimes be brutal to packages. That is why I will continue stressing secure transportation packaging as a definite advantage.

The cooler sits on a smaller box with the bundled accessories that include the following:

• Two brackets for LGA775 mainboards;
• Universal cooler retention for AMD K8 processors;
• Backplate for Socket 754/939/940/AM2;
• Two additional retentions for the second fan;
• A bag with screws, plastic and rubber washers and a key;
• Assembly and installation guide in several languages;
• Cooler Master thermal grease.

Now let’s take a closer look at the cooler itself.