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

A Closer Look

Here you see the stock AMD CPU cooler removed from the motherboard and sitting next to Gladiator 600.  Gladiator 600 has an access port so you can change out any CPU or CPU cooler without removing your motherboard and we love this feature.  Now let’s prepare for installing the Hyper N212 Plus.

As you can see the backplate is installed easily.

Now to install the cooler onto the CPU:

When installing the cooler make sure to tighten down the screws only a few turns at a time and then go on to the next screw in an ‘X’ pattern.

Oops.  Here we have an issue with a lack of room.  You can only tighten the cooler down with the fan unclipped from the cooler.    So now we have to install the fan onto the cooler installed on the motherboard with the clips – and it is damn near impossible, even using a long nose screwdriver and other tools because of the extreme lack of room on an AMD motherboard and especially coupled with an overhead case fan, as in Gladiator 600.  So two things are really working against us having an easy installation; until we found the easy button, that is.

It is very easy to install the fan onto the fins with the supplied clips when it is out of the case, however.  This lead us to some inventiveness.  We first installed the cooler without the fan remembering to tighten the screws in an X-pattern, each screw was tightened a little bit at a time and then we moved on to the next one, until all were completely locked down.  After the screws were down as far as they could be tightened, there was still some play between the cooler and the CPU and it could be twisted a little.  This is normal as long as there is a tight fit between the CPU and the cooling block.

With the cooler screwed down, we used superglue to affix the cooler’s rubber pad at each corner to a single aluminum fin of the cooler. All it takes is one drop of super glue on each corner and hold tight for 30-60 seconds.  When you want to take off the fan from the cooler (to remove it), just pry it loose.  Of course, if you do it dozens of times, as we did to test it for you, then you will begin to damage the rubber anti-vibration pads which are installed on each of the fan’s four corners.

We later found a much better way to install the cooler with the fan attached by using a very long and thin Philips head screwdriver.  We used one with a blade that is 6 inches long with a blade width of 3/16 of an inch and we could now easily tighten the screws with the fan clipped to the cooler!  You will note in the above picture that there is a grove cut into the cooler’s face; into the aluminum fins all the length of the cooler that makes use of this screwdriver almost mandatory if you do not want to use glue – or struggle with fastening the clips inside of the case.

Another view:

We mentioned our difficulties to Cooler Master who quickly responded with a redesign of the clips to be featured in their new models!  We like what we see and it should simplify installation. In the meantime, feel free to  use a long thin screwdriver to get your cooler in and out quickly.  We believe that you will not have the extreme difficulty that we encountered if you are using the Hyper N212 Plus with an Intel CPU as there is more room to install the cooler than with an AMD CPU and mother board.

Here it is finally installed:

Here it is with the side case panel on:

As you can see, the case side panel will not accommodate a fan inside your case although you could install it on the outside of your case (for a rather ghetto look).