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.

Packaging

Cooler Master’s Hyper N212 Plus arrives in a cardboard box packed with everything necessary to cool any CPU that you may buy.  Here is the box with all of the hardware laid out next to it.  As you can see, the specifications and features are printed right on the box.  The Hyper N212 plus is pictured and we can see that it is “universal” – engineered to fit any modern Intel or AMD CPU’s cooling needs – overclocked or stock.

The cooler is safely packaged in a plastic shell inside the box.

And now everything without the box.

The instructions are adequate.  We had no difficulty following them for installing Hyper N212 Plus on either an Intel or AMD CPU platform.

In the next photo, you can see that the backplate on the Hyper N212 Plus is reversible – as pictured, it is for AMD; reversed, for Intel platforms.  It is a very clever design and a way for Cooler Master to save money on the manufacturing of it.

This CPU cooler is beginning to look like quite a bargain for only $30.  But is it quiet?  Let’s look at the specifications.

Specifications and Features

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus Heat Pipe Direct Touch CPU Cooler

Here we have a good look at the direct contact copper cooling pipes that are soldered securely into its aluminum cooling block.  The machined finish is not terribly smooth, but well within tolerances for an inexpensive cooler and the minor grooves and imperfections can easily be filled with thermal paste.  That said, this editor is going to recommend a thermal paste like Arctic Silver over Cooler Master’s own supplied (thick and hard to spread) paste.

We do NOT recommend lapping this cooler’s base.  A little polishing might be fine but if you start to lap, you may damage the thin copper pipes that carry the heat away from your CPU and completely defeat its purpose.

Here are the specifications right off of the box:

It looks like Cooler Master has a value winner by the specifications and the “feel” of this solidly built CPU cooler.  Especially attractive are the very low noise levels, 13-32 dBA. We like Hyper N2122 Plus so far, so let’s install it.

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).

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»