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

Noise & the Test

Well, we have been living with Hyper N212 Plus inside our case for weeks and we love it for all of our needs including extreme overclocking.  It does not matter how hot your CPU gets, you will not hear your CPU cooler over your videocard fan, especially if you choose a GTX 280 or HD 4870-X2.

The last time we ran a comparison, we got our Phenom II 720 X3 to 3.5 GHz with +.1V overvoltage.  In contrast, we managed to get our Phenom II 550 X2 to 3.9 GHz with the same amount of extra voltage applied to its core.  We also found that the Hyper N212 Plus tamed its dual core’s heat rather easily, allowing us to breeze past the stock AMD cooler which left us –200 MHz lower on the overclock and at the same time over +20C hotter.  In fact, at only 3.7 GHz we were getting concerned that our temperatures with the stock cooler were becoming dangerous.

With our Hyper N212 Plus, cooling our hot dual-core Phenom II 550 X2; our maximum temperatures only rose 3-5 C over the idle temps and there was no temperature difference we could discern between 3.1 GHz and 3.9 GHz at idle.  There is really no comparison between overclocking with the stock AMD cooler and overclocking with Cooler Master’s Hyper N212 Plus – only contrasts.

However, this time we wanted to give our Hyper N212 Plus a better workout.  So we went for a much more extreme overclock on our tri-core Phenom X2, this time raising our voltage +.2V; somewhat dangerous to its chances of having a long life but definitely raising the core temperatures for our tests.  This time, we managed to remain stable all the way to 3.9 GHz – almost+400 MHz more than with our more conservative +.1V, overvolt.  Let’s take a look at our setup:

The Test and Conclusion

Test Configuration – AMD Hardware

• Phenom II 720 at 2.8 GHz, 3.486 GHz and 3.886 GHz
• Phenom II 550 X2 at 3.9 GHz
• Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P (latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire 8x+8x).
• 4 GB OCZ Fatal1ty DDR2-PC8500 RAM (2×2 GB, dual-channel at PC 8500 speeds)
• ATi Radeon HD 4870-X2 (2GB, reference clocks 750/900) by VisionTek
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive
• Cooler Master Silent Power 600 M, 600 watt power supply
• AMD stock CPU cooler
• Cooler Master Hyper N212 Plus Direct Touch Universal Cooler (supplied by Cooler  Master)

Test Configuration – Software

• ATi Catalyst 9-9; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard”

• Windows Vista 64-bit SP1; very latest updates
• DirectX March 2008.
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Vista 64, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths
• Everest Ultimate

Let’s look at screenshots of Everest Ultimate running its stress test on our Phenom II 720 X3 at stock 2.8 GHz, 3.7 GHz and at our maximum 3.9 GHz.  Everything at idle is about 36C/25C to 40C/29C – 4C difference between stock idle and idle at 3.9 GHz with +.2V more voltage applied to the core.  Now check the maximums, after 1 hours of stress testing.

Now at 3.5GHz:

Finally at our maximum, 3.9 Ghz – a full 1100 MHz overclock!

We note that the ambient temperatures were warm and consistent at 75-77 F during all of our testing.  Look at the minimums, which are the usually the beginning of the test and not yet under load and then at the maximums, generally recorded at their peak after an hour.  To this CPU cooler’s credit, we do not see a lot of temperature differences.  In fact, Hyper N212 Plus passes our overclocking test with flying colors; from 43C/32C at a stressed 2.8 GHz to 45C/33C at 3.5 GHz to a maxed out 51C/38C at 3.9 GHz.  In other words, +.2V and an 1100 MHz overclock only got the temperatures up 6C-8C over the maxed temperatures of a stock tri-core Phenom II 720!!

We see Hyper N212 Plus doing an excellent job of cooling.  We really like this $30 CPU universal cooler, except for the minor issues we had with installation (that are easily avoided with the right screwdriver, as we detailed for you).

Conclusion

When it comes to cooling your CPU efficiently and quietly, Cooler Master is the company to turn to.  We saw Hyper N212 Plus quietly eclipse the stock cooler on both the dual and tri core Phenom IIs – overclocked as far as they can go, given the overvoltage used in each case – up to +.2V for 720 X3 which allowed it to match 550 X2 in speed but at a much lower extra core voltage (+.1).

Pros:

• Hyper N212 Plus is inexpensive and a good cooling solution for overclocking all modern CPUs.
• Direct Contact heatpipes works very well with the very quiet 120 MM fan.
• There are clips provided for an additional (optional) second 120 MM fan in a “push-pull” configuration.

Cons:

• Clips are difficult to install the fan on the cooler (inside the case without a special screwdriver).

There you have it.  Cooler Master’s Hyper N212 is an excellent cooler for a inexpensive price and it is well-deserving of our “Editor’s Choice” award.  Recommended.

Our next article series will deal with Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference this week before we return to our value series with an examination of PCIe 16X vs. PCIe 8X and more benchmarks.

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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«1. Introduction2. Packaging3. Specifications & Features4. A Closer Look5. The Test & Conclusion6. View All»