Cooler Master MASTERAIR MA621P Air Cooler for AMD Threadripper @ [H]

thing's YUGE and has arrgeebeh!
edit: finished reading. holy frankencooler! bit of a letdown though. ok for stock and snazzy looks I guess. oh and newegg has the fans but they do come from china.

 

While it did fail the extreme 1.417v test, I'm still surprised it was able to pass 1.373v.

As for the mess of cables, was it not possible to rotate the fans so that the cables would have had to wrap around the fan casing and, therefore, effectively shorten the cables?

 

As always, thanks guys for the review.

I know I'm part of that dying breed that's still into air cooling but I gotta say this thing looks like a mess. I'm also known for being a fan of cooler master products. All that being said I really feel this is a heavy convoluted wth kind of thing. Kind of a bummer for them since I know they can do better.

 

My biggest gripe with this cooler outside of the indicated rat's nest of wires, is that for a 120mm based cooler, for it to be 164.5mm in height isn't great for case compatibility. My Noctua NH-U14S TR4 SP3 is only 165mm and it's a 140mm based cooler.

I've used it on my 1950x at 3.8Ghz at 1.24-1.25 volts, and even with Prime95 Small FFT I don't think I ever exceeded 77 celsius. At stock I don't go above 59 celsius inside of a case with single fan, and 57 celsius with dual Phanteks PH-F140HP_2 fans. I can't use the Noctua NF-A15 in push-pull, they make a loud whining/weed whacker noise, but this is more for cooling the back side RAM than anything. The Phanteks fans as well as the Fractal Venturi HP-14 were both far better in that regard.

It seems like a DiY loop with a competent water block, outside of EK's original block is definitely a better/best solution. Most 360mm radiators can dissipate around 300 watts with decent fans not running at anything more than 1500 RPM max . The Enermax AiOs are pretty good too (especially at 280/360mm) but I'm wary of AiOs in general.

Thanks for the review guys, and at least it looks good. More Disco Fandango please

 

That's what I was thinking. You know, it might be ugly but maybe there's a new technique and it'll be even more efficient but not to be. KISS is still a good rule of thumb.

 

Hey Kyle, you should let 10e borrow it to test on his 1950x, maybe it will have a better showing.

 

Honestly, that's about what I expected out of a coolermaster heatsink. For years, people raved about the Hyper 212's and how they gave a performance bump without breaking the bank. The reality is they only help on low TDP chips for a small overclock that's great when comparing to stock Intel cooler, but is still last place when comparing it to literally every other cooler out there.

I installed one of those for a friend on an AMD FX build a few years ago because he bought it based on advice on some other forum. It was the last coolermaster I will install until I see some change with their ridiculous mounting mechanisms. It's performance was underwhelming even at stock speeds. I refused to sign off on that build. I ordered a Noctua for him on my own dime.

The only thing that was unexpected about this review was it eked out enough performance to NOT get the famous [H]ardOCP fail logo.

 

How dare you bring physics into this.. man with those people. They'll use any strawman they can get, i swear.

Anyway, i wonder how this would have performed with different fans; not particularly certain these were the best choice for this monstrocity, and they do have alternatives, ihhouse stuff. Someone wasn't thinking this through over at CM.
( for example, http://www.coolermaster.com/cooling/case-fan/masterfan-pro-120-ap/ )

Lastly, may i correct you once again Kyle? :S
TR4-centric air coolers are also being made from different companies. Noctua's for example; 'older' designs, granted, but with a redesigned surface plate so as to match the TRs:
https://noctua.at/en/nh-u9-tr4-sp3
https://noctua.at/en/nh-u14s-tr4-sp3
https://noctua.at/en/nh-u12s-tr4-sp3

 

Just reading about that install process (and cable management concerns) gave me a headache - I could only imagine what it was like actually having to do it.

Also thanks for putting on the [H] moniker to the thread title, a little piece of Seymour screams inside whenever that's missing from a [H] article/review.

 

No and please do, never a fan of monologues

Wasn't trying to be a smartass, i just read "we haven't seen any", so you know..

(it's a bitch being inside the autism spectrum, lol.. i'm on the other end of it, but still in it. Vorsicht! Things. Must. Be. In. Order. Achtung!)

((you put that into a custom title, i'm hiring a hitman))

 

I think you misunderstood me or I wasn't clear. Let me rephrase.

What I meant was I fully expected this thing to fail under any condition... because its a CoolerMaster.

That's just my opinion.

 

I was not implying you provide him the cooler to make the cooler look better, it would simply be a better result because of; exactly what you stated, he has a primo CPU. I was kind of poking at 10e to be perfectly honest, ohhh this is myyyy CPU, and I run this all the time at blah blah. Don't know why it bugged me, but it did HAHAHAHH! No hard feelings, I don't think it was meant that way, just the way I personally interpreted it.

 

Did I miss something somewhere?

Do you mention in the article anywhere what the stock cpu temperatures are using AMDs stock cooler?
I'm assuming that AMD supplies one when you buy a Threadripper, right?

Obviously, I would not expect the stock cooler to support overclocking.

 

CM needs to make changes on anything bigger than 4 heat pipes, that is the sweet spot for direct contact heat pipes but when you get bigger, more heat pipes you need a cold plate to spread heat with also some mass.
You just have to look at NH-U14S TR HS with a large cold plate and it matches some water coolers.

 

pretty sure they dont come with one. every unboxing I saw was just a chip it the big ass package.

 

I love big air, just so quiet and stable. But this thing is a bit ugly. I guess that's cooler masters MO though lol.

 

Nice review, Kyle!

I'm a Hyper 212 fan for bang for the buck, but this monster just looks horrible and didn't seem to perform well for the price.

The 212's can mount a couple different ways, with the airflow going either vertically or horizontally depending on your case airflow. While I don't think that matters much in a "normal" (ie - not Threadripper) setup, I wonder if changing the heatpipe orientation would make a difference. Not worth the effort I guess.

Actually that Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 looks like a much better designed cooler and around the same price? I could care less about the disco lights, personally.

edit - after looking at that TIM mating picture, I guess the orientation only goes one way with these due to the rectangular shape. Never mind.

 

The NH-U14S TR4-SP3 is great, I've had one since launch. I don't OC, but generally my temps hover in the mid to low 50s with all cores maxed out, so it probably has headroom to push a little further. That's inside my case too and I have a pretty high ambient temp here living in AZ.

The installation process was also a breeze. After reading this review, it seems like a no-brainer to get the Noctua instead based on my experience with it. Hopefully Kyle will review it at some point.

 

To me it resembles the Noctua NH-d14. It was massive but cooled extremely well especially when you added a third fan. Noctua has the NH-U14s TR4/SP3 which I read a lot of good reviews about but I just purchased the Coolermaster MA621P with a third fan to replace my Kraken X62 280 Rad.