Cooler Master Hyper 212 Halo Black CPU Cooler Review

Performance

Cooler Master made this cooler so freakin easy to fit. A standard screwdriver put the two Intel bars on the tower, then screw it to the backplate, and the screws are already on the cooler, and uh, clip the fan on. Took me literally 1 minute, what a time-saver!

Once it’s setup, you can hook up the PWM header to your motherboard or controller of choice easily enough, and the ARGB header to whatever controller you have, most motherboards have a spare header or two these days anyway, so Cooler Master no longer include a SATA powered one in the box.

The fan looks absolutely stunning too, with really vibrant colours, and there are lights in the middle of the fan as well as around the edges for the ring effect, both of which pour light into the frosted fan blades, giving you a veritable portal of colour.

Plus, the front edge and back edge of the ring are visible from the edges, which only further enhances the overall effects and makes the RGB enjoyable from virtually all angles.

Jet black cool, premium fan, top-tier RGB integration, this is by far the best looking 212 to date.

Just a heads up, as you may or may not know, I took over cooler reviews from Mike a little while ago, so I’m working on a new methodology, a new test bench and more. Replicating mikes testing environment is going to lead to inconsistencies in our results, so I’m starting new. With that in mind, there’s only one cooler the Hyper 212 really needs to replace, and that’s the stock Intel cooler on our test bench!

Temperatures

At stock, the Intel cooler idled at 32C, and the Hyper 212 was just 30C. That makes the Intel +11C above ambient, and the CM just +8C.

However, things get pretty toasty at 100% load using WPRIME for Intel’s stock cooler, which hit a staggering 100C, and system performance became very stuttery at that point, so it was clear we were hitting a thermal limit for that CPU at it was a shocking 79C above ambient. However, Cooler Master maxed out at just 81C, which is a whopping 20C under that of the Intel and resulted in zero throttling of the CPU, allowing it to churn through WPRIME without issue.

However, these tests do result in the fans running 100% to keep things cool. I ran the same 100% intensive CPU load again, but with the fans fixed at 50% constant using a Noctua fan controller. As you can see, the temperatures of the Intlel cooler still hit 100c and throttled. However, Cooler Master ran warmer at 62C but didn’t throttle, yet we were able to reduce the RPM and noise levels quite a bit.

Acoustics

At PWM settings, the Hyper 212 was quieter than Intel, not by much though as they’re both virtually silent until your close enough to get a shave from them. At PWM 100% load, the Hyper 212 was a little louder than Intel, but again, the Intel was throttling the CPU hard. Yet at 50% fixed load, the Hyper 212 was fantastically quiet at 34 dBa, yet still only peaked at 62C over ambient.