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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garadante - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
I actually imagine that in the 240/280mm closed loop coolers, there's easily more than .25 liters of coolant. Perhaps even approaching a liter or more, depending on the size/density of radiator piping and the tubing.If your numbers are closer the accurate, than that's a fair enough way to say 15 minutes is likely enough, but still, I'd like to see 30-60 minute tests for the best performers, or even longer. Run those 280mm radiators for 1-2 hours and see how much/if at all that affects performance. Because on that slight change that it -does- affect it significantly, these numbers posted in the review are absolutely meaningless and misleading.
coffeejunkee - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
Well, interesting results to say the least. Tom's Hardware and X-bitlabs have reviews up as well comparing aio's to NH-D14 and Phanteks PH-TC14. Their results are quite different from this. For example in the X-bitsreview the H55 is easily beaten by PH-TC14 but here the H55 does better than the NH-D14. Something's not right, and it's probably called outtake fan.Nfarce - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
Just remember that there are a lot of variables in different entities testing the same cooler, not the least of which is hardware including the case itself, and the success of how well the coolers are attached to the CPU with paste to minimize gaps. Then you have ambient temperature and altitude differences, etc. I wouldn't trust one review to be better or worse than another review of the same cooler. You are better off trying to find a pattern among all the coolers tested you are interested in and see which one mostly stays on top.coffeejunkee - Saturday, March 16, 2013 - link
Well, yes that's the reason I comment. I read many cooler reviews and I'm aware you can't compare them on an absolute basis, too many outside variables for that. But the results of this one have me scratching my head. This is simply the first time I see an aio like H55 do better than the NH-D14 and it just doesn't make much sense to me. I mean, look how thin the H55 radiator is and then look at the massive 1 kg of copper and aluminium which is the NH-D14. Ok, so H55 has higher rpm fan, but the dual fan setup on the NH-D14 counters that.Also, Hyper 212 is a nice heatsink if you can get it around $30 but just 1.6 degree difference vs NH-D14? Which weighs like twice as much and has 2 fans, one even a 140mm model? Maybe using the NH-L12 bracket isn't so ideal afterall (also might be nice to mention regular NH-D14 doesn't come with pwm fans).
mapesdhs - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
I wish you'd included the Phanteks PH-TC14PE. It's cheaper than the NH-D14, looks nicer
and in many reviews performs better.
Ian.
Nfarce - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
I've been loving my NH-D14 on a 4.8GHz 2500k for two years solid now. Even in summer indoor ambient temps of 80F (27C), it never gets above 55C at that high level o/c running 1.38v. Of course the modded Antec Nine Hundred it sits in has excellent airflow too.And two years ago I paid $85 for the thing, so the price has not come down at all, which speaks volumes about the continued demand for them. Best $$ I ever spent under $100 on a piece of hardware.
Havor - Saturday, March 16, 2013 - link
I don't get all the bias of the reviewer against the NH-L9i, yeah for normal PC use its pretty much useless, but thats not ware its made for.Its a HTPC/small form factor cooler, and it fits in to places ware its big brothers don't fit, its real competition is the Scythe Shuriken series and some other low profile solutions.
Lycros - Saturday, March 16, 2013 - link
Anyway you can use the same fan(s) across all of the heatsinks next time?ellroy80 - Sunday, March 17, 2013 - link
Dustin, your review of the NH-L9i is really not fair. It states on the Noctua website that "The NH-L9i is a highly-compact low-profile quiet cooler designed for use in small form factor cases and HTPC environments. While it provides first rate performance in its class, it is not suitable for overclocking and should be used with care on CPUs with more than 65W TDP." So your usage scenario is really not applicable to this cooler. Any chance you could re-test it with, say, an i3-3225?lichoblack - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
I have to agree that the review paints the cooler in bad light, but instead of using another CPU, I'm more game with changing the restrictions: test small coolers and see how they fare. The NH-L9i/L9a have a very low height, and you can use them in very, very restrictive cases (thinking of an htpc/emu case using a Lian-Li PC-Q12, then you can only use a cooler up to 55mm, so you can use a stock intel fan, but not an AMD stock fan. see:http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php... Not many coolers fit this bill, and big air just doesn't fit this. CLC could, depending on the case, but big air can't. So more small aftermarket coolers so we can better paint the small air picture :)