Cooler Master Hyper 6+: Universal Heatpipe Tower
by Wesley Fink on February 14, 2007 12:02 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Noise
For many enthusiasts the goal in upgrading cooling is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For other users silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo maximum overclocking if this increase system noise levels. In general the Hyper 6+ can be considered very quiet, which is certainly an improvement from the early models with the louder fan - at least where noise is concerned.
We could not create operating conditions that reliably forced highest speed on the 100mm fan, so we attached a Zalman fan controller and dialed in the highest speed to create that condition. For that reason the stress noise measurements should be considered the worst case measurements - noise that you will not likely ever hear with this cooler.
There are virtually no power supplies that do not have a fan. While Zalman and a few others do make a few expensive fanless power supplies, we have not seen a fanless unit larger than 500W, or one that would be used for seriously overclocking a system. With that in mind the noise level of the system with all fans turned off except the power supply was measured. The power supply used for the cooling test bed was the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is one of the quieter of the high performance power supplies. The noise level of the power supply was 38.3dB from 24" (61cm) and 47dB from 6" (152mm). The measured noise level of the test room is 36.4dB, which would be considered a relatively quiet room with a noise floor slightly below the OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU.
Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken with an open side of a mid tower case 6" from the open HSF and 24" from the open HSF. Real world would be a completely closed case with a further reduction in noise.
The noise measurements for the Cooler Master Hyper 6+ were definitely on the quiet side of tested coolers. The 100mm cooling fan on the Cooler Master is extremely quiet at low speeds, within 1 dB or below the noise floor of the test system. It is also among the quietest coolers at higher speeds, and comparable to other high-end units at maximum speed. Considering the Hyper 6+ fan has to work harder at 3600 rpm, it certainly remains a quiet fan. It is also rare than the fan even approaches high speed in day-to-day operation.
The only small complaint we have is that the excellent fan included in the kit is a non-standard 100mm. Buyers would have had a wider range of noise control and performance options had Cooler Master chosen a standard fan size like 120mm or 92mm.
For many enthusiasts the goal in upgrading cooling is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For other users silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo maximum overclocking if this increase system noise levels. In general the Hyper 6+ can be considered very quiet, which is certainly an improvement from the early models with the louder fan - at least where noise is concerned.
We could not create operating conditions that reliably forced highest speed on the 100mm fan, so we attached a Zalman fan controller and dialed in the highest speed to create that condition. For that reason the stress noise measurements should be considered the worst case measurements - noise that you will not likely ever hear with this cooler.
There are virtually no power supplies that do not have a fan. While Zalman and a few others do make a few expensive fanless power supplies, we have not seen a fanless unit larger than 500W, or one that would be used for seriously overclocking a system. With that in mind the noise level of the system with all fans turned off except the power supply was measured. The power supply used for the cooling test bed was the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is one of the quieter of the high performance power supplies. The noise level of the power supply was 38.3dB from 24" (61cm) and 47dB from 6" (152mm). The measured noise level of the test room is 36.4dB, which would be considered a relatively quiet room with a noise floor slightly below the OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU.
Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken with an open side of a mid tower case 6" from the open HSF and 24" from the open HSF. Real world would be a completely closed case with a further reduction in noise.
The noise measurements for the Cooler Master Hyper 6+ were definitely on the quiet side of tested coolers. The 100mm cooling fan on the Cooler Master is extremely quiet at low speeds, within 1 dB or below the noise floor of the test system. It is also among the quietest coolers at higher speeds, and comparable to other high-end units at maximum speed. Considering the Hyper 6+ fan has to work harder at 3600 rpm, it certainly remains a quiet fan. It is also rare than the fan even approaches high speed in day-to-day operation.
The only small complaint we have is that the excellent fan included in the kit is a non-standard 100mm. Buyers would have had a wider range of noise control and performance options had Cooler Master chosen a standard fan size like 120mm or 92mm.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - link
For straight air cooling? Not likely. The Tuniq 120 already stays pretty cool, and for the most part it's at the point where temperatures aren't the limiting factor in stuff like OC'ing. The only way to get better in terms of temperatures would be water or phase-change (or TEC). In terms of noise levels, it's already very quiet, but maybe an even larger HSF could do a bit better. Really, at this point the case will start to have as much of an impact as any further HSF changes.Now, if someone can come up with a way to make heatpipes work even better or something, we might see incremental improvements, but basically air cooling is pretty topped out I think. From here, we just want lower prices, lower noise, smaller, etc. but you can't usually get more than one of those at the same time.
yyrkoon - Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - link
Speaking of size, what is a good low profile cooler ? In my case (no pun intended), I'm using a Lian-Li PC-G50, PSU sits right over the CPU, and I would like to find a good low profile CPU cooler . . .katastrophe - Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - link
Shouldn't the graph on page 5 be titled as Mhz, or the values changed to reflect Ghz?Wesley Fink - Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - link
Yes. Corrected to be more consistent.thatdjsnow - Saturday, August 24, 2019 - link
Perfect! I'd been checking out this older blog at https://compareheatsinks.blogspot.com for a good heatsink comparison but it only has a few Cooler Masters! Womp Womp.. 😂This was much more helpful, thank you!