First impressions

Cooler Master's new CPU cooler comes in an immaculately packed, newly designed retail packaging. Their signature colour combination of White and Magenta still lingers in their package designs. The height of the box gives tell-tale hints to potential owners about its tall profile..

Out comes the cooler from the box! Behold, a rather tall heatsink, with a single transclucent onyx-black 120mm fan that gets illuminated by accompanying blue LEDs when the system powers up. The fan's air flow is an impressive 69.69 CFM for a comparatively low noise level of 19 dBA @ 2000rpm.The cooler feels amazingly light for its weight - 710 grams. Considering  that heavier weighted heatsinks would have an adverse effect on vertical mounted motherboards in the long run, Cooler master has really toned down the weight of their higher-ended CPU coolers - a point that enthusiasts should celebrate about!

 

The primary feature of the CPU cooler would be the screw-on fan mounting clips and the 8 heatpipes that stretch the entire height of the heat-sink. With heatpipe technology becoming a norm amongst 3rd party cooling device makers nowadays, its hard to ignore the fact that this cooler comes with a rather standard configuration.

 

The backview of the heatsink , from which we can observe the streamlined aluminium fins. The special point about this heatsink is that instead of other conventional 3rd party brands that focus on a large single structure to dissipate heat, the Hyper212 has opted to go for two separate structures - dual uniformed rows of copper heatpipes decked out with a large amount of aluminium fins in a semi-circular fashion. The two separate metal entities are only joined together at the base of the heatsink. Innovative design by Cooler Master, kudos to that!

 

Now for a look at the heatsink's base. Not too shabby ! The base adopts a mixture of Copper and Aluminium to help absorb the heat quickly towards the two separate metal structures.

Not to worry about compatibility issues across different platforms - the Hyper212 can be mounted on your Intel or AMD-based setup easily, with it's custom backplate and mounting brackets( For LGA 775/ AM2/939/754). Mounting the cooler on mainboards should be quite tedious to first timers, but  an easy task to experienced enthusiasts who have already dealt with mounting mechanisms of this kind since its introduction several years ago.

Pre testing

The Hyper 212 in all of its glowing glory.

Have a look at the Benchmark platform:

Operating System	Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
Processor	Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (2.93GHz, 4MB L2, 1066MHz)
Memory	Kingston KHX10000D3LLK2 2GB Kit @ 6-6-6-15, DDR2-1000MHz
Graphics Card	ASUS EN8600 GT 256MB
Hard Disk	Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA
Cooler	Stock Intel HSF
Power Supply	Silverstone Zeus 650W
Motherboard	BioStar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe ASUS P5K3 Deluxe

In this test, the Coolermaster Hyper 212 will be going against the ZeroTherm BTF80 and the stock default QX6850 heatsink.

For the actual benchmark itself, Coretemp is used to measure the 4 core on-die temperatures probes, CPUBurn is ran with 4 instances to maximise the load of all 4 cores of the QX6850 to ensure maximum heat generated.

Note: As there is an issue with the QX6850 detection with the Coretemp, the CPUID showed is different and voltage detection is inaccurate.

Next up, benchmarks...

Stock QX6850 HSF Temps

In our series of test, a consistent ambient temperature of 26c and every mount and dismount of the tested heatsinks will have a new applied layer of thermal paste.

First up, the Stock QX6850 Heatsink fan.

Idle Temperature (Stock CPU Voltage)

Load Temperature (Stock CPU Voltage)

Idle Temperature (1.45v CPU Voltage)

 

As you can see, all 4 cores have a slightly different temperature and there is a significant difference between load , idle , voltage upped load and voltage upped idle.

 

 

ZeroTherm BTF80 Temps

The Zerotherm BTF 80.

Once again, tested in the order of

Idle Temperature (Stock CPU Voltage)

Load Temperature  (Stock CPU Voltage)

Idle Temperature (1.45v CPU Voltage)

Load Temperature ( 1.45v CPU Voltage)

 

Hyper 212 Temps

The Coolermaster Hyper 212.

Once again, tested in the order of

Idle Temperature (Stock CPU Voltage)

Load Temperature (Stock CPU Voltage)

Idle Temperature (1.45v CPU Voltage)

Load Temperature ( 1.45v CPU Voltage)

Now that you've seen the temperatures, let us compile them..

Overall Temps

 

Core #2

Core #3

Core #4

Now we further compile the results and compare their averages:

 

CPU HSF ( Voltage Core)	Temp (Average) Celsius
Stock	44.25
Stock (1.45v)	57.13
ZeroTherm BTF80	39.25
ZeroTherm BFT80 (1.45v)	51.38
Coolermaster Hyper 212	40
Coolermaster Hyper 212 (1.45v)	49.63

As you can see, the Coolermaster beats both the ZeroTherm BTF80 and the Stock QX6850 Heatsink Fan by 1.75c and 7.5c in high heat load conditions. The temperature shown is the average of 4 cores. Interestingly the Cooler Master Hyper 212 loses out to the Zerotherm BTF80 by 0.75c in Low heat load conditions.

Overclocking

Moving on to overclocking performance..

In our benchmarks, we test the capibilities of the chip's overclocking headroom on the 3 various Heatsink fans.

With the stock heatsink and a vcore of 1.45v,, we managed to push the chip to 3.8Ghz, from the orignial 3.0Ghz, thats a 800Mhz or 26% increase. Yielding a 5782 CPU score in 3Dmark06.

With the ZeroTherm BTF80, we pushed the chip an 80Mhz higher than the stock heatsink by providing us a frequency of 3880Mhz ( 3.88Ghz) which is equlivant to an increase of 29.3%. The 3DMark06 CPU score is 5922.

 Now using the Coolermaster Hyper212, we achieved a benchable frequency of 3,920MHz (3.92Ghz), that's pretty close to an increase of 1Ghz, statics show an increase of 30.6%! 3DMark CPU test score achieved was 6051.

Conclusion

Althought it was quite a hassel to setup, screws, nuts, washers, bolts, you've gotta do them all. Not to mention removal of the socket. But if you pay close attention to the instruction manual I believe it's a simple procedure.

Also do note that although this is quite a large heatsink, it is pretty light for it's size. Fear of the mounting socket under strain should not pop up.

With so many heatsinks in the market, so many factors to consider, such as number of heatpipes, material , design, size, number of fins, etc... It all still boils down to one thing and one thing only, performance. And how it improves one's overclock.

How did the Coolermaster Hyper 212 fair? We've tested the performance, you've seen it, it outshines against a strong competitor such as the Zerotherm. Price wise? For a sum of USD $ 42.99 (SGD $ 64.70), you get a lot of metal and a nice LED fan. I am impressed that I can significantly derive a 40MHz increase in overclock over another third party cooler.

Overall, two thumbs up! Inexpensive and great performing.

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