Cooler Master ML280 Mirror AIO CPU Cooler Review

A Closer Look

Starting with the cooler as a whole, the MasterLiquid ML280 mirror carries a nice sleek black design and, in terms of weight, for a 280mm AIO, it doesn’t feel overly cumbersome or heavy in the hand.

This is, however, not the completed design. Let us, therefore, take a closer look at some of the individual components and see what we think of this cooler on a more in-focus level.

Pump Head

The pump head has a squared base that transitions into a circular top part. The mirrored surface to the pump head doesn’t initially look very impressive and although I don’t wish to give away any spoilers, the aesthetics get taken to a whole new level when the lights go on!

It should be noted that the pump head mirrored surface does come with a protective sticker with a rather terse warning not to remove it prior to installation. Although we had to (for the sake of photographs) this does make me wonder whether this surface is highly-susceptible to scratches which may significantly impact the ‘mirrored’ lighting effect.

Put simply, if this is a cooler you plan to use in the long-term and over several builds, it may serve you well to keep that protective covering handy between builds/installations just to ensure you keep this as damage/scratch free as possible. We have a feeling that this is important!

Contact Plate

The contact plate is nice and large with the copper grooves just about visible from the right angle. This should, all going well, represent some nice thermal contact and, by proxy, heat dissipation.

Radiator

As a 280mm radiator, on the whole it does appear to be a rather standard design. It’s big, and it’s black… what else were you expecting?…

Unlike many other brands, however, Cooler Master has at least gone to the trouble of providing some branding to the side which, although minor, should make a nice addition to the overall aesthetics.

Although this will likely not be an issue for the vast majority of PC chassis designs, it should be noted that in terms of the hose, it isn’t particularly generous in length. In addition, and although hard to describe, the hose connects to the pump in what I can only decide as an apparent ‘left-handed’ system. It’s really difficult to put into words, and again I don’t think really would impact anything significant in terms of performance, but compared to other AIO designs, Cooler Master has (in so far as I can tell) installed the hose on the opposite side of the radiator/pump head. Clear as mud I know…

Fan

As this is a 280mm AIO liquid cooler, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that you are provided with 2 x 140mm cooling fans. Although these do not come with any RGB/ARGB lighting effects, Cooler Master has still done an excellent job in terms of their presentation with the black edges contrasting well against the off-black (almost metallic effect) fan blades.

A closer look reveals this to be a ‘SickleFlow 140’ fan which is a Cooler Master own design. As such, with this being specifically created by them and for this cooler, this should (all going well) imply that the components should work well together to keep those CPU temperatures and acoustic levels low.

ARGB Lighting

As noted above, although the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML280 Mirror only provides ARGB lighting effects to the pump head, the infinity glass style design certainly makes up for any conceived aesthetic shortfalls you may have thought this cooler was going to have!

It is, of course, one thing to tell you about how good this looks, to give you a better idea, however, we have filmed a brief video showing some of the MasterLiquid ML280 Mirror lighting effects in action. Seeing them below, I think we can all agree that this looks really nice and would certainly be an excellent aesthetic addition to the vast majority of PC builds!

Overall

In terms of the overall design, the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML280 Mirror certainly looks more than a little impressive both in terms of the build quality and aesthetics.

How good it looks, however, is only one part of this review. There is still the small matter of how well it performs in our testing and, from a more practical outlook, how easy this cooler is to install. Let us, therefore, strap this to our test bench and see how easy (or hard) fitting this AIO is.