The Cooler Master Hyper 212 - a really bad tower heatsink

[Felger Carbon]

See it here.

First, it's 160mm high. Not 159.5mm, like the HR-01; the full 160mm monty. 160mm is a "magic number" that's one of the ATX case standard widths above the IHS. The HR-01 misses my Ever Case E3505B left side panel by 0.5mm (no kidding).

Second, it has a 3-pin 120mm fan, with no fan controller, that turns 2000RPM. The OCIA reviewer sez it's inaudible. The spec sez it's 19dBA. 2000RPM, 120mm fan, more than 7 blades? Inaudible? Huh?

And now for the cherry on top of this turkey: The cooling fin grid is in two parts, with a huge gap in between. Naturally, the cooling air passes directly thru this huge gap, producing no cooling effect at all. See the "gallery" in the manufacturer's link above. The two-piece cooling grid is illustrated plainly. Anybody think this may be an elaborate joke?

The OCIA review correctly reports the truly pathetic cooling of this 160mm monster (given 160mm tower, 2000RPM 120mm fan).

[disphenoidal]

I do like how they list "mirror-finished base" as an advantage. What, exactly, is the benefit of a polished base if in the end, you only get "moderate performance?" That's the beauty of review sites. They can always find something positive in even the worst products, lest their supply of review samples dry up.

[Felger Carbon]

In the interests of fairness and complete reporting, Hartware.de has reviewed this new heatsink and, contrary to OCIA, got very decent results. This page, with the measured results, does not get obliterated by an ad after a few seconds as the other pages do (with the possible exception of page 1).

Basically, with 840RPM fans, this heatsink outperformed the SI-128 and was beaten by a munificent 0.2C by the Scythe Infinity (!!).

[wwenze]

SPCR should get their hands on more of these type of heatsink, priced cheaper than top end yet having good performance.

Or unless those companies are still unwilling to send review samples despite knowing SPCR, or are they unwilling to send review samples because they know SPCR?

I mean, a 840RPM 120mm fan with bad bearings, can be loud by SPCR standards... especially when mounted on a heatsink. Sure, we complain about PSUs being too loud when their fans are around 1000rpm with little impedence... but that's the way things are here, right?
(Let alone a 2000rpm 120mm fan... @ full speed... or undervolted)

About fairness, I'd like to point out, albeit slight OT, that, what've been puzzling me is that the Ninja scores badly in many reviews, so many that it's easy to google, and can be beaten easily by Ultra, ZeroTherm etc, even when the fan speeds are set to "high". Something to do with heatpipe variance?

[JaYp146]

Anandtech just gave it a glowing review:
http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsu ... spx?i=3141

*scratches head

[Jeff Cutsinger]

And now for the cherry on top of this turkey: The cooling fin grid is in two parts, with a huge gap in between. Naturally, the cooling air passes directly thru this huge gap, producing no cooling effect at all. See the "gallery" in the manufacturer's link above. The two-piece cooling grid is illustrated plainly. Anybody think this may be an elaborate joke?

Actually, in a way, it makes a perverse kind of sense. It's likely most of the cooling is provided by the fins nearest the heatpipes, so to save money, they cut out the middle. Maybe if you put something in between to deflect air from the middle back onto the fins you could improve cooling?

So, thinking of it, if I were to design a tower cooler, it would be two cylinders that just barely touched each other in the middle. Maybe.

Edit: actually, the optimum might be to have a 25 mm gap and sandwich a fan there.

[Chris Chan]

Edit: actually, the optimum might be to have a 25 mm gap and sandwich a fan there.

A la Scythe Mine or Tunic Tower?

[Felger Carbon]

Edit: actually, the optimum might be to have a 25 mm gap and sandwich a fan there.

A la Scythe Mine or Tunic Tower?

Or the real pioneer, the TT Sonic Tower? You know, TT never did officially acknowledge the use of a "sandwiched" fan, although numerous heatsink reviews proved that was the best location for a single fan.

[Felger Carbon]

The Hyper 212 is now available for purchase here.

[jmke]

Don't know on what you base your opinion, but in my testing of the Hyper 212 it proved to be quite good;
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getart ... rticID=633