CPU Cooling by jmke @ 2011-02-08
Cooler Master cut a slice of the bottom of their Hyper 212 and TX2, making them direct-heatpipe-touch models. We put them through their paces on an overclocked Core i7 platform. Can these budgetfriendly cooling solutions offer a good alternative to Intel's stock cooler? How do they compare to high end, 788 gram, heatsinks? Read on to find out!
Cooler Master has been making enthusiast CPU coolers ever since the first AMD Athlon Socket A/462 CPUs were overclockable. Since then they have been releasing products that outperformed the competition or provided excellent value for money. Of course there were sometimes products which were not really that good at cooling, but looked fancy when placed inside a case with window panel. The Hyper product series however is definitely one of their high performance coolers; their first Hyper 48 was a top down copper cooler with heatpipes which gave the best Thermalright heatsinks a run for their money. When they released a 1kg copper monster for the fragile Socket A CPUs we were treated by the first tower cooler AND performance monster which held the performance crown on Socket A for years to come.
Fast forward several years and we see their Hyper series evolving into tower coolers which feature excellent platform compatibility, good price and recommendable performance. Today we take a look at the latest instalments in the series, the "I support up to 2x120mm fans" Hyper 212 Plus and more compact Hyper TX3. The new feature of these coolers is the base, where now the heatpipes are directly exposed to the IHS of the CPU.
Before we delve into details, here are the specs sheets of today's contestants
* Well-balanced cooling performance:
1. Computer aided heatsink design provides fin optimization with perfect balance between high and low speed operation.
2. 4 x Direct Contact heat-pipes for seamless contact between CPU surface and cooler.
3. Wide-range PWM fan with unique blade design for excellent airflow.
4. Upgradable to dual fans and swapping of fans with extra fan-clips included.
* Fan mounting using clips for easy installation and swapping.
* Versatile all-in-one mounting solution for Intel Socket LGA1366/1156/1155/775 and AMD Socket AM3/AM2+/AM2.
* Silent operation with minimal noise level at 13 dBA.
* Excellent airflow design with compact heatsink dimension.
* Flexible mountings for Intel Socket LGA 1156/1155/775 and AMD Socket AM3/AM2/940/939/754.
* Maximum compatible CPU wattage: over 130W TDP.
* 3 x Direct Contact heat-pipes with aluminum fins to provide excellent heat dissipation.
* Option for adding 2nd fan to increase cooling performance.
* New 92mm PWM fan with wide RPM range and anti-vibration rubber pads.
* Silent CPU cooler at only17 dBA (at minimum speed).
* Easy swappable fan by clips (clips for 2nd fan included).
* Excellent airflow design with compact heatsink dimension.
We start of with the bigger of the two, the Hyper 212 Plus is based on the 212 cooler released in 2007 for the S775 platform. While the name difference is small, the actual product design has been completely overhauled. Not much remains of the original 212, except for the fact that it's a tower cooler.
Inside the cardboard box you'll find a manual, mounting gear, thermal paste, a PWM 120mm fan with new blade design, and of course, the new Hyper 212 Plus heatsink.
The fin design is no nonsense rectangular, with cutouts for small weigh reduction as well as slits for the fan mounting clips. A total of 4 U-shaped heatpipes are now DHT design as you can see on the picture on the right.
The included 120mm fan is rated at 2000rpm, at full blast it won't be silent, but being PWM and with the right fan controller, it will start up at only 600rpm and remain virtually silent. At the edges of the fan frame Cooler Master has placed rubber pads to reduce vibration noise.
Installation requires motherboard removal, no matter what platform you have, unless your case features a cutout (like the HAF922 pictured above). Metal bracket and screws will provide excellent mounting pressure and no worries of the CPU cooler (~630gram with stock fan) dropping of during transport.
The Hyper 212 Plus' rather slim design leaves enough room to navigate around the CPU socket and screw down the mounting bracket. The fan clips are for open-flanged 120mm fans only, keep this in mind when you plan on adding/swapping a fan.
Last word of device is regarding the mounting pressure, screwing all four screws to their maximum resulted in a NO POST of the system, releasing them a tiny bit brought the system back to live. This is not the first time we experienced this behavior when using heatsinks which provide a lot more pressure compared to the stock Intel heatsink. Keeps this in mind when you install the Hyper 212 Plus.
The orginal Hyper TX (released end of 2006) quickly became a favorite choice for compact and affordable cooling for the S775 platform, offering an excellent performance/noise balance without requiring 1kg of copper to achieve it. The new Hyper TX3 incarnation has a lot to live up to. Cooler Master remained realistic with their TDP design and has rated the TX3 for use on all current platforms except LGA 1336, there's only so much a 92mm 470gram heatsink can do, of course.
The Hyper TX3 is a mainstream heatsink which means easy installation, inside the box you'll find mounting brackets for all platforms, two sets of fan mounting clips, a detailed manual, thermal paste, the new 92mm fan and of course the heatsink itself.
This 92mm PWM fan has the same blade design as the 120mm version equipped on the Hyper 212 Plus, at 2800rpm its maximum speed will make it audible, at its minimum of 800rpm not so audible, of course.
It looks very similar to the Hyper 212 Plus, only 3 heatpipes, but similar fin design and same DHT base. Of course one might be mistaken by its size, so we placed it next to a Prolimatech Megahalems so you can really see the difference in overall size!
Installation is as easy as the default Intel heatsink, using the same plastic pins which offer a good balance between mounting pressure and ease of installation. If you plan to reinstall the heatsink often, you might want to look into a custom mounting option as these plastic clips will wear down after a while.
Our S775 test setup has been laid to rest as we move along with our times. Although the majority of PCs in the world are still S775 based, we realize that those people who buy and install 3rd party heatsinks, will not use outdated hardware. To give an idea of how the tested heatsinks perform a variety of heat outputs we performed our tests with the CPU overclocked (and overvolted) at 3 settings. The test setup consisted of the following gear:
- Intel Core i7 920
- MSI X58 Motherboard
- Geforce 7900 GT with Zalman VF900 @ 5v
- 3x1 Gb DDR3 RAM
- Laptop 5400rpm HDD
- Coolermaster HAF922 (Default fan config, 200mm Front and Top, 120mm in the back, all at 12v)
Windows XP was installed and LinX 0.6.4 used for creating 100% CPU load. When comparing different software tools, we measured the total system draw at the wall socket, with the Core i7 920 at stock speeds:
- Prime95 (8 thread): 155W
- K7Burn (8 instances): 167W
- LinX: 200W !
Than we overclocked/overvolted the CPU to 3.4 and 3.7Ghz, to create these three profiles:
1) 2.67ghz - 133Mhz - default vcore - 200W
2) 3.41Ghz - 170Mhz - +0.05v vcore - 250W
3) 3.71Ghz - 185Mhz - +0.2v vcore - 362W
The last is brutal and only the high end CPU coolers can survive this test, hitting 100°C CPU temp caused the thermal throttling to kick in and so if you see a heatsink with CPU temp results of 100°C = FAILURE.
The ambient room temperature was 22°C during testing. Noise readings of the CPU coolers and fans was done outside the system, with the dBA meter placed diagonally at approximately 20cm. Ambient noise recorded was 32dBA.
We test each heatsink with its default fan, and if we can fit a reference fan we will use the following depending on the fan size:
- Vantec Tornado 92mm (4800rpm)
- Titan 120mm (2900rpm)
- Delta 120mm (3200rpm)
- GlobalWin NCB (1300rpm)
With the Core i7 920 at stock speeds we can see that both Cooler Master units are about 6-7°C better while being noticeably quieter. The Hyper 212 Plus with its default fan offers a good performance/noise ratio, but the fan at full speed is well audible, swapping it for the GlobalWin NCB the temperature only climbs by ~3°C. When we go the other way and add the high end 120mm fans the performance increases marginally, only 2°C better with the Delta 3200rpm while the noise is unbearable. The Hyper TX3 is struggling on the S1336 platform, with the stock fan you do get a better performance/noise ratio than the stock Intel cooler, which is a good thing, but there's not much performance to be gained here, even with a 4800rpm 92mm fan the TX3 is barely better than the Hyper 212 Plus. Overall here a good showing, with performance numbers falling in the "mid-range".
Adding 50W to the system is almost too much for the stock Intel cooler, luckily the same cannot be said for the Cooler Master units, they keep the system running stable. The Hyper 212 Plus with its stock fan has a nice 16°C lead over the Intel cooler, the TX3 an impressive 12°C. Swapping the fans on the heatsinks makes more of a difference here, the TX3/Tornado combo drops temps by 4°C, while the Hyper 212 Plus and Delta fan are at the top of the performance board.
This last bump in CPU Mhz and especially vcore pushes total system usage over 360W, or +160W compared to the stock configuration. That extra heat takes its toll, the stock Intel cooler and Hyper TX3 throw in the towel, while the Hyper 212 Plus with stock fan barely manages to remain under the 100°C limit. Swapping the fan on the TX3 with the insanely loud Vantec Tornado does prevent the CPU from throttling, and the same goes for the Hyper 212 Plus with the 2900rpm Titan fan. Coupled with the Delta screamer the Hyper 212 Plus manages a bit better, but when compared to the high end Megahalems there is a noticeable chasm of 11°C, and you can see that the Megahalems manages to keep the CPU below 90°C with a silent 120mm fan, quite a performance feat!
Time to combine the temperature results, noise readings, usability and pricing into a verdict.
As you saw on the previous page, we put the Hyper's through their paces using an overclocked Core i7 system, which when highly overclocked/overvolted, easily surpasses the thermal capabilities of most mainstream heatsinks. Both Cooler Master Hyper units barely managed to keep an overvolted/overclocked Core i7 running.
But when you turn down the dial on your overclock and easen the burden the Hyper 212 Plus managed to deliver a recommendable performance/noise balance, offering a noticeable improvement in noise and temperature performance compared to the Intel stock cooler. The Hyper TX3 was not designed to take on a Core i7 S1336 system, but still came out with some impressive results if you take this fact into account.
While neither of the heatsinks tested today stood a chance against our reference heatsink, a Prolimatech Megahalems, it should become clear why when you take pricing into account. The Hyper TX3 is on sale for ~€13. The Hyper 212 Plus for a mere €25. That's still less than half of the Megahalems which is available at ~€50+.
So did Cooler Master manage to continue the good "Hyper" name tradition with these additions?
For the Hyper 212 Plus the answer is a definite YES, for a bargain price you get a pretty good performing, 120mm fan equipped heatsink with straight-forward installation and good platform compatibility. Slap on a high performance 120mm fan (or two!) and you can squeeze quite a bit of cooling power out of this budget friendly unit.
For the Hyper TX3 the answer is less obvious, the price is definitely easy on the wallet, as is the installation on the supported platforms, performance/noise wise however the TX3 doesn't really excel, and while it's better than the Intel stock cooler, there's stiff competition in the entry level heatsink market, until we've tested other alternatives we'll hold off on making a final judgement on the Hyper TX3.
We like to thank Cooler Master for giving us the opportunity for testing their products (and their patience). Until next time!