CPU Air Cooler Roundup: Six Coolers from Noctua, SilverStone, be quiet!, and Cooler Master
by Dustin Sklavos on March 14, 2013 2:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Cooler Master
- SilverStone
- cooling
- Noctua
- be
Conclusions, Part 2
The second set of conclusions are for be quiet!'s ninja, the Dark Rock Pro 2, along with Cooler Master's stellar budget performer, the Hyper 212 EVO.
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2
The biggest problem with be quiet!'s Dark Rock Pro 2 is that it's incredibly hard to find in the United States. At present, the only place you can get it as NCIXUS, and NCIXUS isn't exactly well known for their competitive pricing. The Noctua NH-D14 was already a tough sell at $81, and as much as I love the Dark Rock Pro 2, I don't think it's worth the $20 premium. This is without a doubt one of the quietest and most efficient air coolers you can find, but until the price comes down the premium won't justify the slightly superior efficiency over the Noctua.
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Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
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I'll confess I went into this part of the review with a little bit of a bias. While my experiences with Cooler Master's products have been mixed, the Hyper 212 coolers have generally been very well regarded. And why wouldn't they be? The Hyper 212 Plus and EVO employ basically the same direct touch heatpipe technology that made Xigmatek's HDT1283 such a crowd pleaser, and they're both incredibly affordable. Cooler Master is able to eke a tremendous amount of efficiency out of this design with just one good 120mm fan, and while the 212 EVO can be beaten by closed loop coolers or fancier air coolers, it's an easy sell to an enthusiast on a budget.
Conclusions
Fundamentally, what I'm left with are a series of coolers that at least, outside of SilverStone's unfortunately middle-of-the-road Heligon HE01, can all justify themselves in their own way. Users looking for a beefy air cooler will essentially find themselves choosing between the Noctua NH-D14 and be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2, and under those circumstances I have to give the edge to Noctua based on price alone.
Meanwhile, users looking for a low profile cooler are probably going to be served fairly well by the NH-L12. The NH-L9i is certainly an upgrade over an Intel stock cooler, and I can imagine corner cases where a user will want one, but under most circumstances I just don't think it does enough to really merit purchase. If you need a low profile cooler and want some extra juice out of it, the NH-L12 is likely going to be the way to go.
Finally, as I mentioned before, I went into this review with a bias toward the Hyper 212 EVO and frankly, it delivered. The price-performance ratio of Cooler Master's Hyper 212 coolers is essentially bulletproof and speaks to the same type of user who overclocked not to hit records, but to get the most out of his or her limited investment. A build using a Hyper 212 EVO and an Antec GX700 enclosure, for example, may not be the most attractive system in the world, but it'll get a tremendous amount of mileage out of the buyer's money. Because the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is able to produce fairly competitive thermals without too much noise pollution, I'm happy to award it a Bronze Editor's Choice award.
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cjs150 - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Personally I would also prefer water cooling for the simple reason that a good (thick) 240/280 Radiator can cool both CPU and GPU and there is no need to worry about whether the RAM heatspreaders are too tall for the air cooler.What the result show is just how good the closed loop water coolers have become.
However, there is no denying air cooling is simpler, less prone to messy accidents (I know!) and perfect for those who like to keep the computer on all the time. Nice review and keep up the good work
James086 - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
A minor caveat: be sure to point a fan at the ram and motherboard heatsinks. I didn't and because there was no airflow around my motherboard, it popped a VRM.StevoLincolnite - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Ram cooling isn't important, they don't even need heatsinks, it's all for looks.However, motherboard cooling is important, spend a little extra and get a motherboard with decent heatsinks or even active cooling like the Sabertooth x79.
Plus, case airflow is important too.
maximumGPU - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Nice review! wish there was a thermalright silver arrow on there to get a more comprehensive look at the high end coolers. When i bought mine it was widely considered superior to closed loops, looking at the review's results i'm not so sure about that now.wiyosaya - Tuesday, April 2, 2013 - link
I've been a fan, pun intended, of Thermalright paired with Scythe fans for a long time. I currently have a TRUE Spirit 120M paired with a very low noise 120mm Scythe fan cooling an i7-3820. The absence of noise was a prime factor for me, and I don't overclock because stability is also of prime concern for me. IMHO, this combination works very well.I, too, would have loved to have seen any of the Thermalright heat sinks in this review.
iTzSnypah - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
I don't believe that the case has adequate airflow.iTzSnypah - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Also there is a fault in your testing methodology. When you tested the CLC's you effectively increased the number of case fans, which would increase airflow and decrease load temps.I suggest you retest, with the case always having 3 fans, 1 intake and 2 exhaust.
FragKrag - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
I don't think the point here is to get a completely unbiased performance test, but rather test the coolers in a realistic environmentdragosmp - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
The thing is there's not more realistic not to have case fans than to have them. One may argue that it's more likely to encounter systems that have one/two exhaust fans than to have only one intake.I'm suspicious of these results as most sites put aircoolers in a much better light and my own experience show it's a bad bad thing to remove rear fans.
In this setup aircloolers spit warm air that is hardly being channeled out by anything; the positive pressure generated by the front intake can be dissipated in many ways that don't move the warm air around the CPU zone. I've worked recently with a 600T, if the up/rear fans were slowed to 400RPM (so still working) with a CM 212+ @1200RPM and a 2700K@4.2GHz the CPU got toasted in games 80°C+ - running the fans @800RPM decreased the temp by some 20°C.
"I removed every case fan but the front intake, which I ran at 5V to prevent it from affecting acoustics while still providing adequate airflow." - how much airflow was there thru the fan-less rear exhausts?
lever_age - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Right, look at how restrictive the back panel looks. Some people with intake-heavy setups (and that would be a whole lot more than a single fan at 5V in a large case that's very far away from the CPU cooler) cut out the spot and use a wire grille instead, and remove slot covers.If it weren't for some of the top venting, the air coolers would have been really suffocated. In that setup, there is a bias towards the CLCs because their fans are actually working close to the actual vents on the case, due to how everything is mounted and positioned.
If you're only testing down to 30 dB, you can easily run a few more decent-quality fans at some ~800 rpm and get some more reasonable airflow without really increasing the noise level measured.