Coolermaster HHC-001 CPU Cooler

Author : Wayne Date : 11th March 2002

 

Performance :

Test system :

Epox 8KHA+ Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP2000+ @ stock
Radeon 8500 Retail
256MB Kingmax PC2100 DDR SDRAM
WindowsXP Pro
Nanotherm Blue thermal grease

As you may be aware Joe is our regular cooling guy and this cooler would normally get strapped on to his synthetic temperature rig but unfortunately I didn't have time to get this one over to him so we'll have to run the official test at a later date. All isn't lost though, because I had to look at this one myself it seemed a great opportunity to put it up against me personal cooler of choice, the excellent Swiftech MCXC370 as reviewed by Joe HERE.

The Swiftech proved to be a wicked performer and I had more or less convinced myself that if the Coolermaster could keep within two degrees of it I'd consider it a major achievement, especially considering the substantially lower price.

The initial temperature on the graph below is the idle temperature recorded after 20 minutes of doing sweet nothing with all background tasks closed. Temperatures were recorded using the 8KHA+'s onboard thermal diode which is fine for the purpose of this comparison as any inaccuracies will be reproduced for both units. For stressed temperatures I ran SiSoft Sandra's Burn-In Wizard with ScienceMark 1.0 running in the background. Temperatures were recorded after each complete run of the Burn-In Wizard. CPU Usage remained constant at 100%.

Unusually the room temperature was a rather low 17c for these tests thanks to the heating failing in the room used for testing.

 

Now there's a result I wasn't expecting. The HHC-001 equaled the swiftech under full load and idled a degree cooler. You will also notice the Swiftech reached its 37 degree maximum before the Coolermaster did. This could be explained by the Coolermaster idling a degree cooler and thus taking longer to max out so I decided to time how long it took for each unit to return to its idle temperature after 15 minutes running at its maximum. Here's how it panned out, obviously lower is better.

Looks like a fairly convincing result as the Coolermaster makes it back to idle which remember was a degree lower to begin with, with 18 seconds to spare over the Swiftech! I think we need to keep in mind that the Swiftech isn't 100% copper but rather it has a heavy slab of copper forming the base with aluminium helicoid pins pressed into it.

Conclusion :

PROs
Cheaper than some similar high performance coolers
Easy to use clipping mechanism
High performance fan
Relatively good noise levels
Superb performance
Supplied with thermal grease
Nice packaging
Innovative design

CONs
Poor base finish
No adapter for 4 pin PSU Molex operation
Heat pipes may cause clearance problems on some motherboards
Clip mounts on two socket lugs rather than six

Kudos must go to Coolermaster for what is an incredible performer that deserves to make its presence felt in the performance cooling market. Their original heat pipe design was a brave move that didn't really make the grade but rather than just give up on the idea Coolermaster went back to the drawing board and produced a new design that beats the pants off its predecessor, and most of the competition too. Certainly for the price it's as good as anything I've ever got my hands on.

I suppose the question is how much of the performance is directly due to the heat pipes, well I've no idea but who cares when it looks good and cools beautifully, I've certainly no intentions of destroying it to find out but if the performance of similar designs is anything to go by they certainly seem to be doing something. In theory any solid copper sink with these dimensions and a high flow 36CFM fan is going to be reasonably efficient but this is something unusual.

The base, as I mentioned earlier is poor quality and at over 500g I'd want a three cleat retaining clip to feel totally happy but these are minor tweaks that Coolermaster may or may not decide to implement later. I'd also be more comfortable powering the fan from my PSU rather than off a motherboard header but you can pick up the adapters to do this yourself without too much trouble.

Noise levels for such a high performance an are fairly reasonable, certainly not as loud as the infamous Delta but still possibly too loud for some. The noise is of a higher pitch than you find on the Pabst fans used by Swiftech which can also make them a little more audible and annoying but I think the balance between airflow and volume is pretty good on the Coolermaster.

Perhaps the biggest potential problem is component clearance although I must say that I've tried it on five motherboards with only one causing even the slightest concern, that one being the Epox 8KHA+ used for testing where the heat pipes touched the fan on the North Bridge. It wasn't enough to be of any real concern but obviously I can't test every possible motherboard configuration so you'll need to check yourself for possible problems before ordering.

Rather than finish on a negative I think I should make the point that this is an impressive cooler that deserves your serious attention and only the minor niggles kept it from a 3DVelocity award. I'm sure that if Coolermaster work on these points the HHC-001 will become one of the best, if not THE best all round cooler for the price available at the moment. That's quite a statement and although statements like that have a habit of coming back to bite you I can only speak as I find, and what I find is one helluva product!

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