Final Thoughts
Price
At around £18 the Cooler Master Hyper 103 is superb value for money. It might not be ideal for heavy overclocks, but it is certainly much better and quieter than what a stock Intel / AMD cooler would typically offer.
Conclusion
I really like this cooler, it may not be ideal for my gaming rig but I cannot deny that its performance at stock clocks on our i5 3750K was impressive. It beat out the Ereboss cooler with ease and while the Ereboss is a little quieter, it is also more expensive.
Overclocking didn’t go so well and while this cooler could happily handle a mild overclock, I wouldn’t feel happy running it at our overclock level for long periods. This is of course no bad thing that it didn’t perform that well in overclocking tests, it is priced well enough to appeal to the budget end of the market and it is unlikely to need to handle that level of heat anyway. If you’re running a stock i5, then this will do you nicely.
It may not be the quietest cooler we’ve tested, but it was hardly noisy either and once in a half decent PC case I’d be surprised if you ever heard it on a non overclocked system.
The design is nothing special, but it does look neat and tidy. It is also nice and compact too and it is perfect for smaller form factors or any build where space is limited. The blue LED fan looks pretty cool too and I do like that you can swap out the fan should you wish to do so.
Pros
- Great cooling performance at stock clocks
- Reasonably quiet at stock clocks
- Small footprint
- Low price
- Easy to use mounting kit
Cons
- Not ideal for overclocking
- Can get a little noisy if running hot (typically when overclocked)
“For a low price CPU cooler the Hyper 103 is a great option, it is not quite award material for us, but at £18 you’ll be hard pushed to find anything better and it is a good-looking and performing CPU cooler. If you’re planning on overclocking it may be worth looking a little higher in the CM range, if you’re running stock clocks, this will be ideal for most.”
Thank you Cooler Master for providing us with this sample.
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Excellent and informative review peter …. having allready used the TX3 i was expecting good results from the hyper 103 and i wasnt dissapointed …. as i dont overclock the 103 fits the bill and the only downside being the blue led 92mm fan ( as my case uses 2 x 120mm red led,s … however im guessing you can use the clips i got with the TX3 that allow you to add a second fan and attach a red led fan to the heatsink )
i was also considering the freezer 7 pro however many have reported defective mounting systems which is unusual as arctic cooling are generally on the ball with their cpu and gpu coolers
many thanks for a excellent indepth review !
This is a great cooler.
When I played games or transcoded video on my AMD A10-5800K, the stock AMD HSF buzzed and struggled valiantly, keeping the APU at about 74°C. Mind you, this is playing games like StarCraft 2 and DOTA 2 at low-med settings.
Just installed this lil beauty (using Arctic Silver 5, FWIW) and played some DOTA 2 with all settings maxxed. The whole time the APU barely touched 55°C, mostly hovering around 54. Oh, and unlike the stock fan it couldn’t be heard over ambient noise.
We’ll see how this performs as time goes on, but to me 20 degrees cooler is an incredible result that was well worth the price of this cooler. It was a little fiddly to install – had to take off the fan to get one of the screws in, but it pops off and on very easily so that’s not a big hassle – but overall I couldn’t be happier!