CoolerMaster Masterair MA612 Stealth CPU Cooler Review

A Closer Look

Out of the box, the CoolerMaster Masterair MA612 Stealth looks fantastic with it already pre-assembled and in its ‘final form’. The sleek black aesthetics look fantastic and, with a number of exceptionally smart choices made with the fan design, the initial impressions are that this is a top-spec design.

The fan coverage is excellent with the 2 x 120mm fans easily providing more than enough coverage for the radiator while not being overly excessive. With it continuing the overall color scheme as well, this should, all going well, provide some nice and solid airflow.

While there is some branding visible to the CoolerMaster Masterair MA612 Stealth, it is well-placed, well-sized, not overdone, and overall fits in well with the aesthetic of the design.

Another key factor in the design is the fact that the radiator has been slightly offset from the base of the design. This has been deliberately done to ensure practically no issues will be present in terms of RAM compatibility.

Contact Plate

With 6 heat pipes leading from the contact plate on each side, this is again indicative that the CoolerMaster Masterair MA612 Stealth is a high-performance cooler design. With them all coated in black as well, there is no disruption to the visual presentation in this area.

The contact plate itself is fantastically large and, as such, should be entirely suitable for both standard AMD and Intel CPUs. Polished to an amazing shine as well, this should provide some excellent heat dissipation and, by proxy, nice and cool CPU temperatures.

Radiator

Based on the overall size of the CoolerMaster Masterair MA612 Stealth, it is somewhat surprising to find that when you remove the fans, the radiator itself is actually quite slim.

Just because its small though, we don’t think that this is going to have any problems in regard to performance. The gaps to the fins are small, but still large enough to allow for a good level of airflow and, to keep the sleek styling, CoolerMaster has also (wisely) chosen to include a capping plate to hide the tops of the pipes.

Fan

Coming with 2 x 120mm fans (mounted on either side of the radiator), a closer look at them confirms that they are CoolerMaster’s own SickleFlow 120 design. This is a fan we’ve seen them use in the past and have never failed to be impressed with its performance. As such, seeing it here is more than a little encouraging!

Rather than making you deal with amazingly fiddly (and often very annoying) metal clips, the fans for the CoolerMaster Masterair MA612 Stealth are attached directly to the radiator by preinstalled plastic cases. This is amazingly helpful as you do need to remove both fans to install this cooler and, with this system in place, reinstallation literally takes mere seconds!

Overall

Based on the design and presentation of the CoolerMaster Masterair MA612 Stealth, I have to admit to being very impressed. Based on the packaging I expected this to be a somewhat generic ‘middle of the road’ cooler design and, based on what I found while taking a closer look, I can’t help but feel that this is potentially a lot better at its job than what the box work might have indicated.

Will that be the case though? Well, before we get onto the testing, we have to find out just how easy (or hard) this is to install!