Specifications, Availability and Pricing

The main body of this cooler is an aluminum fin, forty five in total, that are pressed over the heat pipes to remove the heat. These fins keep the dog bone-like shape of the 212 coolers, just this time they are much deeper to allow the six, 6mm heat pipes to travel up and deliver heat to those fins. As the heat pipes exit the bottom of the fins, they get sandwiched between the copper base plate, and a very large, all aluminum, pre-cooler that is the top piece of the base. On top of the cooler there are two layers of thicker aluminum; the topmost one is emblazoned with the Cooler Master logo, and allows the tips of the pipes to protrude for a contrast of the copper against the black painted fins.

Using the DF1202512SEUN fan to cool the body of the cooler is a reasonable solution. The ratings of the fan are pretty good for the 36 dBA maximum noise level rating. Along with relatively low noise the fan is capable of speeds up to 2000 RPM with 2.7mm/H2O of static pressure delivering up to 82.9 CFM. In my opinion this should be more than plenty to handle the task of removing the heat from all of those large fins surrounding the six heat pipes, but let's let the testing see if I am right or not. Of course, due to the name of the cooler, the fan must have a 4-pin PWM connection for power. Compatibility of the Hyper 612 covers all the latest from AMD, and all of Intel line-up still in retail.

In emails back and forth to Cooler Master I was able to find out that the Hyper 612 PWM we are looking at today has a MSRP of $49.99. It doesn't seem that many coolers have hit the sub-$50 mark lately, let alone done anything good at that price range. The Polaris 120 comes to mind, but that had a "take no prisoners" fan attached to it, and this cooler does not have the same caliber of fan. Due to the large nature of the cooler, it has potential to overpower some of the competition even with a fan only pushing 80CFM. So let's get down to business and see what our $50 investment is going to return to us.