The PC cooling marketplace is now filled with great looking liquid coolers which are designed to offer enthusiast performance along with ease of install. To many consumers though they are an expense, or a perceived risk that is a step too far and so air coolers remain popular. Recently one of the better known names in the cooling business launched a new revision of a popular product and today we cover that in our Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 Review.

Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 Review – Packaging and Bundle

 

Cooler Master package the Hyper 612 Ver.2 in a reasonably large box which gives us a nice clear image of the product on the front along with some notable features. Key specifications are noted as well, with further more detailed info on the other sides. Inside we find a box with our bundled items which include two types of fan attachment, mounting brackets for all recent AMD and Intel mounts, thermal paste and product documentation.

The fan provided by Cooler Master for the Hyper 612 Ver2 is a 120x120x25mm model which has RPM of 800-1300 and it uses a 4pin PWM connector. The air flow rating is 26.6-44.2CFM (45.2-75m3/h) with air pressure of 0.6-1.6mm H2O and it uses a rifle bearing design with curved fan blades. Our noise level rating is 11-20dBA.

Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 Review – The Cooler

 

The Hyper 612 Ver2 is shown above  and sticks closely to a tried and trusted design. That being a large number of aluminium fins through which six copper heatpipes with 6mm diameter pass. These pipes make direct contact with our CPU.

Part of the mounting mechanism is attached to the CPU block at the factory and the dimensions are 139×106.5×160.4mm, rising to 150.1×128.9×160.4mm with fan. Finally, the weight is 732g or if you prefer 1.6lb.

Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 Review – Installation

As we noted earlier in the review, the Hyper 612 Ver2 supports all recent AMD/Intel mounts and that includes the 2011-3 version found on the X99 based boards which Intel launched earlier this month… thats what we are using for testing today on our Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5 with i7-5960X at stock and 5.0GHz.

 

Installation on all platforms starts with us getting to a stage where there are four screws surrounding our CPU. On sockets such as FM2, AM3 and 115x we attach them to a backplate which hold the screws in place behind the board, passing them through the pre-drilled holes in the motherboard. In the case of 2011 we get a seperate set of screws which we screw into the stock Intel mount as shown above. Either way the result is the same and to our four screws we attach the heatsink mounts, bolting them in place.

 

With the brackets in place we then install one further bolt. This then allows us to hook one side of the cooler mount to the bracket and screw on the other to clamp it in place. Our final step is to attach the fan connector to the motherboard and clip the fan in place using either of the mounting mechanisms.

Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 Review – Performance and Conclusion

Shown above is the Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2, installed on our motherboard, and clearly it is a large heatsink which extends over the memory slots on one side of an X99 (or X79 board). You may wish to keep this in mind when deciding on some memory, we used Corsair Vengeance LPX modules as shown above, giving us 4x4GB without issue. In terms of the rest of the install, really it was quite simple. We were able to complete it without instructions but for those who need them, they are well written. The large plastic clamps are a bit more stylish than the metal versions and less fiddly, so we would recommend them but than that minor issue the install is very easy and quick.

Build quality is also decent with the soldering and construction decent. We get nice solid fins, rather than flimsy easily damaged items as found on some competitor products and we noted no defects on the heatpipe contact surfaces.

Performance was also good with the cooler outperforming other single fan models whether they be similar size or a touch smaller. We were also able to mount a second fan on the heatsink easily enough and that improved performance a touch. For interest we have also included one of Cooler Masters liquid coolers below, so that you can compare the performance benefits from that. It is worth noting that while the liqid cooler does perform noticably better when the CPU is overclocked, the 612 Ver2 is significantly quieter. In fact it can be used fanless on many budget to midrange CPUs and ran very quiet with Intels highest performance CPU.

Stock i7-5960X:
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Intel i7-5960X @ 5.0GHz
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Summary:
Quick and simple installation mixed with competitive performance and low noise operation wins the Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 our recommended award.