High Performance Gaming on a Budget: Building a Value PC with Cooler Master’s Hyper N212 Plus CPU Cooler

The  CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper N212 Plus

Welcome to our Value series, part 5.  This review covers the CPU cooler of our new value build that we introduced here.  The second part of our “High Performance Gaming on a Budget” series of reviews, reviewed an extraordinary value case, “Building a Value PC with Cooler Master’s Gladiator 600”. The third part jumped ahead to the benchmarks, comparing our new value PC’s AMD Athlon II X2 and Phenom II X2/X3 platform verses the much more expensive Intel Core2Quad setup.  The latest part 4, covered Cooler Master’s Silent Pro 600 M PSU which proved to be very underrated, silent and stable at only $80 for a 600 watt unit.

However, as important as saving money on hardware is, this editor believes that the choice of a CPU cooler is critical to any PC build. The cooler should never be cheap or retail. Too much depends on it if you value keeping your CPU cool or plan to overclock. I would recommend that you instead look for sales and perhaps even rebates to save money.  At the time of writing this article, Cooler Master’s Hyper N212 has been on sale at NewEgg.com for the last few weeks for only $29.99.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065

In the following image you can see that the copper heatpipes come into direct contact with the CPU – hence the name, “Direct Heatpipe Contact”.  It promises to transfer the heat much more efficiently when the copper heatpipes are in direct contact with the CPU plate than if they are encased fully in the aluminum cooling block.  Clearly Cooler Master had to cut some corners to achieve this for under thirty dollars.  We explore.  Or did they promise more than they can deliver?  We shall see.

You also need to remember that a quality universal CPU cooler will likely last through several builds if you plan ahead. Another thing to consider is “noise” – ideally you do not want your CPU’s cooling fan adding much noise.  Here we see Cooler Master taking a different approach to the CPU cooler that we reviewed a few months ago – the Hyper N520 which uses two much smaller 92 MM fans in push-pull configuration for quiet and effective cooling for about $45.00 on NewEgg.

In contrast, for Hyper N212 Plus, Cooler Master uses a single, slower-running 120 MM fan to keep noise down while still doing effective cooling.  In fact, they allow for some even further more extreme cooling by allowing for another second (optional; not included) 120 MM fan in a push-pull configuration much like the Hyper N520 – except these fans are much bigger!  Cooler Master even tosses in another set of clips that are useful mostly for their own 120 MM fans.  In this testing, we also found a simple and effective – but very inelegant – way to attach cooling fans to difficult-to-clip CPU coolers that may also surprise you.

We are not out of order by insisting on Cooler Master’s Hyper N212 Plus.  We are helping to get the word out that retail and cheap CPU coolers will perhaps even shorten a hot-running CPU’s life; and they will certainly limit your overclocking potential.