Final Thoughts

I touched on the word 'excited' earlier, or lack thereof. This is where the Cooler Master Hyper 212 sits at. It is a solid cooler with great acoustics but it brings little to the table to make me jump for joy. In all honesty I think the fact that in all circumstances you are forced to remove the motherboard to install the cooler is what has me feeling this way. Many manufacturers have taken the time to make an effort to eliminate this process for consumers, but Cooler Master has changed nothing to their mounting hardware for at least three years.

What is exciting about the Cooler Master Hyper 212 is the acoustic performance. In nearly all situations the fan is inaudible and this can be a big selling point for consumers. The price is also a contributing factor; at 40 Dollars the 212 is less than many of the coolers we have looked at, and if it performed just a little better it would have been my new stand-out in this price range. That honor still goes to Rosewill's Z5 with the 212 coming in at a very close second.

Cooler Master does have a vast distribution system and getting your hands on a Hyper 212 is going to be a lot easier than finding the Rosewill Z5. A big plus for consumers is that they can walk into many retail locations and pull a Cooler Master product right off of the shelf, and from what I saw on my tour of the local brick and mortar shops this last week the Hyper 212 is going to be there with the other mass quantity CPU coolers.