| Cooler Master Hyper 48 | ||
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Product: Cooler Master Hyper 48
Heat pipes are one of the biggest advances in air cooling. They allow computer enthusiasts to gain impressive overclocks while remaining cheap enough that almost anyone can afford to buy a heat pipe. Today we are going to take a look at the Cooler Master’s newest heat sink, the Hyper 48. Not only does this revolutionary product promise excellent cooling but also promises to be extremely silent. Will this heat sink live up to these promises?
Specifications
What You Get
Installation Like many other heat pipes, the Hyper 48 requires a retention bracket with back plate. The installation of the bracket and back plate is not a very hard task but it can be time consuming. In order to install the bracket, the motherboard has to be removed from the case. I found this to be a major disadvantage to the Hyper 48, since I had to spend about 30 minutes reorganizing all the cables. The installation took a total of around 45 minutes. After I had finished installing the Hyper 48 and tiding up my case, I noticed how nicely it fit in the case. Unlike the Thermaltake Fanless 103 and Evercool HPC-925, the Hyper 48 did not stand out too far from the motherboard. It did not block the rear case fans, like both the Fanless 103 and HPC-925 did, and the Hyper 48 left plenty of room between the power supply and itself.
Performance The Test Rig:
Please note that the since Abit motherboards are notorious for displaying higher temperature readings than the actual temperature, I will be using a Digital Doc 5 to get a more accurate reading. The sensor was threaded through the processor pins and applied to the bottom of the CPU. Artic Silver 5 was used with all the heat sinks to guarantee the only thing that was different was the heat sink. Before the testing began I waited 3 days to allow the Artic Silver to set. To get the idle temperatures I booted into windows and let the computer idle with no major programs running for 1 hour. The full load temperatures were gained by running Folding@Home at 100% CPU utilization for 1 hour.
*Note - The HPC-925 was tested at its lowest setting at which the noise output and CFM of the fan was comparable with the Hyper 48
Conclusion I was very impressed with the results that I received from the Hyper 48. My temperatures dropped 11 - 15 (idle - full load) degrees Celsius from the temperatures that the system ran at while using stock cooling. The Hyper 48 was barely able to beat the Evercool HPC-925. That is understandable due to the fact that due to the fact that the HPC-925 has 6 heat pipes compared to the Hyper 48’s 4 heat pipes. Where the Hyper 48 excels is in its all copper construction. If the HPC-925 was made out of copper like the Hyper 48, it probably could have easily performed just as well, if not better than, the Hyper 48. When I first received the Hyper 48, I had my doubts about the Hyper 48 producing only 18dB. I was truly impressed the first time I fired out my computer with the Hyper 48 installed. I found myself checking to make sure that the heat sink fan was spinning. The fan on the Hyper 48 was barely audible, even with my case fans unplugged. The only thing that could have possibly made this product any better was if it used a LED fan instead of the boring black fan. I would think that a heat sink that was marketed towards case modders and overclockers would have an LED fan. However when it comes down to a choice between an LED fan and a fan that is barely audible, Cooler Master made the right choice. Overall the Hyper 48 was an excellent product. It lives up to Cooler Master’s promises of being both a high performance as well as a silent heat sink. The Hyper 48 truly deserves a five out of five.
Pros + Silent
Cons - Installation Time |
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