Cooler Master Hyper 612 Heatsink Review

We mentioned early in this review that there are a few things that we feel make for a great heatpipe cooler.  The first is position of the heatpipes in relation to incoming air.  Often times we see high end coolers with the pipes in line with airflow so only the first pipe is cooled by the incoming air.  Of course the majority of the heat transfer comes from the radiator fins but when it comes to surface area the heatpipe is fair game.  The second is mass at the heat source.  This is mostly in response to core contact designs that have no mass at the base to promote proper heat transfer.  We feel that by doing away with core contact designs and adding even more mass at the heat source you can maintain higher heat loads with less cooling.  

The Hyper 612 addresses both of these concerns and by all accounts they seem to have worked, to a certain degree.

We did observe a higher than expected C/W rating during our overclocking tests despite the excellent rating at stock speeds.  This simply tells us that to support our 200w heat load we needed a more powerful fan to keep things cool but at stock speeds and even minor overclocks you can enjoy both excellent cooling and virtually silent running with the Hyper 612

Installation was rather straight forward and consisted of picking the proper mounting rails and bolting the entire assembly to your motherboard.  We are not fans of the installation hardware since the process can be a little cumbersome.

Overall performance was very good and suggested that the design changes seen here can actually help.  We did feel that the heatsink is a little underpowered due to the silent running fan but adding a secondary fan can help with that.

Six Heatpipe Construction
Good Heatpipe Exposure
Custom Cooling Fan
Dual Fan Option
PWM Fan Design

Only comes with a single fan
Could use a more powerful fan
Mounting hardware