If you’ve been around the PC building game long, you’re probably already familiar with Cooler Master’s Hyper 212 CPU air cooler model and with good reason. Cooler Master‘s Hyper 212 has been around the block a few times with some improvements, but they don’t keep reinventing this because it’s bad. Let’s take a look at the New Hyper 212 ARGB with 3DHP technology.
Performance is directly related to running temps so it’s imperative to have good cooling for the entire case but here we will focus on CPU cooling. You may or may not be overclocking your rig, but you still need adequate cooling or you’ll end up shortening the lifespan of your hardware, not to mention your system may just run slower.
Cooler Master has provided us with the Hyper 212 3DHP Black ARGB so that we could provide hands on review coverage of the CPU air cooler and our experience with the hardware to our readers.
Features
Equipped with a single fan that pushes air through the heatsink vs pulling the air through that has been shown to produce better cooling results. This is worlds better than a top down air cooler. The lateral design keeps the airflow of the case moving.
While it isn’t quite as strong as the Cooler Master Hyper 612 Apex dual fan design it does work very efficiently and that translates to cooling power.
Performance
Idle temps seem to linger around 36-38 degrees Celsius, under everyday usage, email, Youtube just general desktop activity temps remain around 40-44 degrees Celsius, most of the time being under. Under gaming load this cooler is keeping our temps down under 58 degrees Celsius which is pretty darn close to the Hyper 612 Apex we also tested, more on that in our next article. We’re impressed.
This isn’t going to cool your rig as well as a water-cooled system would but if you’re only overclocking to pre-set OC profiles via ASUS AI CPU and/or EXPO / XMP profiles this single tower 3DHP cooler will do the job. Even for semi aggressive gaming rigs, properly thermal-pasted this keeps our temps down to respectable levels. We are not at competition level gaming but temps remain around 50-60 degrees Celsius without seeing many or any spikes beyond that on games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, Red Dead Online, Rainbow Six Siege X, Grand Theft Auto Enhanced.
The Addressable RGB connector lets you control this from your motherboard vs using a stand alone ARGB controller. Our test rig is on an Asus x870e-e, 9800x3d, Windows 11, Fan Xpert 4.0 turbo mode. While we are primarily using Armory Crate to monitor temps, regularly bouncing this off of HWINFO64 the temp readings appear to align. Sometimes within a cpl/few degrees or so.
Anecdotally the ring blade fan does seem to create less vibration and runs quieter as a result. Benchmarking numbers from Cooler Master suggest the similar.
Air Cooler Model | Fans | DBA/Noise Full speed | CPU Thermals | AVG CPU Frequency | CPU Watts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyper 212 3DHP Black ARGB | 1 | 29.3 | 95.1 | 5067.4 | 170.4 |
| Hyper 612 Apex | 2 | 35.7 | 95.3 | 5149.0 | 184.7 |
| V4 Alpha 3DHP Black | 2 | 29.9 | 95.1 | 5082.2 | 174.4 |
Outside lab testing results provided by Cybenetics
Install
Installation is easy. Cooler Master includes the hardware for both AMD and Intel Motherboards. Just remove the existing mounting hardware on your motherboard and install their hardware. Our setup is on an AMD board so you need to first place the riser thumb screws, then add the mounting rails and use thumb screws to tighten those down.
Once that is done you can toss in your CPU, crank that lock arm down, add the included Cooler Master CryoFuze thermal paste. When you’re ready you can place the Hyper 212 and line up into the 4 screws, use an extendable or thin Philips head to tighten down the cooler in an X pattern, couple few turns on each till its tightened down.
Don’t over-tighten them. What nice here is that once you bottom out your screws they are the set to seat the Hyper 212 enough to conduct heat and allow a smidge of room for the layer of thermal paste. This keeps it from squeezing out too thin and takes the variable of uneven application out of the mix. This of course allows you to place a little bit more thermal paste beyond the traditional rice sized bean you used in the past.
Conclusion
AIO liquid coolers have become all the rage but if you’re looking to spend a little less you can still get some excellent cooling performance from air coolers while keeping that slick ARGB look that everyone loves.
Cooler Masters Hyper 212 line is tried and true but that doesn’t mean it can’t get better. The latest revision of the Hyper 212 3DHP Black ARGB CPU air cooler is engineered with a larger contact area, improved stacked heatsink and double 3DHP heat pipes, that’s 6 upright positioned prongs vs just 3 and a ring fan for more efficient cooling. Cooler Master is offering a 5 year warranty on this cooler which means they have some confidence in this product.
Compatible with AMD’s AM5/AM4 and Intel’s LGA 1851 / 1700 / 1200 / 1151 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 sockets.
Cooler Master Hyper 212 3DHP Black ARGB
Coolermaster.com
