Cooler Master have been around in the PC industry for quite some time producing
fans, cases, and power supplies that often show up in OEMs and retailers. More
often than not we're a fan of their cases and PSUs but today we'll be looking at
one of their heatsink/fan combinations the Coolermaster Hyper TX 2.
The Hyper TX 2 sits towards the lower-end of the coolers coming up at $25 around
Newegg. While this is more expensive than a stock cooler it's about $20-35 away
from the higher-end coolers. The packaging on the cooler is very minimal with
the heatsink covered in plastic with some instructions and accessories included
with it.
The Hyper TX 2 is ready to go out of the box for Socket 775 systems featuring
clip brackets and if you need it for a Socket AM2/AM2+ system it the clip fits
in between the heatsink and is easy to install after removing the 775 clips. As
with stock Intel heatsinks it comes with thermal grease already on the heatsink.
A fan is mounted on the outside of the cooler bringing it to a size of 108.3 x
123.7 x 136.5 and moves at 1800RPM and is rated for 22dBA. Fan life expectancy
40,000 hours with a 3-pin connector and is mounted onto a plastic shield
covering the top and back of the heatsink. The heatsink is one made of aluminum
fins and has a copper base with three heatpipes. Installation was a breeze on
both a Socket 775 motherboard and also Socket AM2/AM2+.
Here's our current test system.
Our operating system was Windows Vista. For idle test we let the desktop idle
for 5 minutes after start up and measured the CPU and for the max we ran
Cinebench 10 on loop.
| |
Idle Celsius |
Load Celsius |
| Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 |
44 |
52 |
| Stock AM2 Cooler |
45 |
55 |
| ZeroTherm BTF900 |
41 |
49 |
| ZeroTherm NV120 |
38 |
46 |
As we can see the Cooler Master does better than the stock
cooler but as expected no where near as good as the higher-end coolers. This is
going to make pricing crucially important in regards to this heatsink.
Conclusion:
The Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 is a decent heatsink but nothing amazing and
unfortunately also isn't one of the cheapest out there at $25. That's not a
high-end cooler but for a little more money you can get a lot more
performance or for less you can get about equal from a near stock part. The
best part is how easy it switches between Socket AM2 and Socket 775 without
any need for changing the backplate or mounting brackets so it is easy to
pop on and pop off. That said for the performance we'd like to see price dip
closer to $20 or just under and it would be a much more formidable cooling
solution. As it is it's a step up from stock cooling but you're more than
likely not going to want to do a lot of overclocking with the Hyper TX 2 but
if that's not your goal it's worth looking at.
Score: 88%
|
