Retesting Cooler Master's MasterAir G100M: Last Flight to Infamy

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I have been using my Cooler Master CPU heat pipe, fin stack and fan without failure for nearly seven years. It looks like many rectilinear designs. It works. My HWMonitor tells me my old AMD Phenom II X4 850 stays within 15C of ambient. Close enough for jazz, in my Universe. YMMV. The unit described in this review is a foolish styling exercise that never made it. Mktg is not a good guide to anything, except nonsense. I imagine some folks buy it. Sad, but accurate.
 
Much better tests. It’s a shame performance is so lacking. Still, I would have liked to see the stock fan and maybe some other 90 mm coolers in here like the Noctua L9x65 and the Cryorig C7. The first question for any third party cool has to be how much better is this than the cooler I get for free? Unfortunately, this looks like it might actually be worse.
 
I never recommend matching a CPU's TDP to a HSF. If the CPU is rated for 130, go with a larger capacity HSF for extra headroom to account for increases in ambient temps.

IMHO, the Shadow Rock Slim (160W TDP) would have been a perfect match for that CPU.
 

This one is a bit different from most round cooler designs in that it has a large vapor chamber filling the entire center of the cooler. I'm curious how much that actually assists cooling performance for this heat sink though. This page has some photos of the vapor chamber, which is a large cylinder roughly 41x47mm in size...

http://www.expreview.com/58531-all.html

It's worth noting that AMD's Wraith Spire bundled cooler also includes a similar kind of copper vapor chamber in the center, though in that case it's surrounded by an extruded bock of aluminum with thicker fins. It's not just a copper base, but rather a large vapor chamber that extends all the way up to just under the fan.

But why make this cooler nearly 145mm in diameter when it's only going to use a 92mm fan? They could have easily fitted it with at least a 120mm fan, and probably got better cooling performance. Though perhaps not much heat is getting out to the ends of those thin fins as it is. This cooler is around 75mm tall by 145mm wide, while AMD's Wraith Spire is just around 70mm tall by not much more than 100mm wide, with the same size fan. And yet the Wraith Spire outperforms this cooler by a decent margin, judging by this review of the G100M...

https://www.tech-critter.com/review-cooler-master-masterair-g100m/

If it's significantly larger and has all sorts of clearance issues, yet doesn't perform as well as AMD's mid-range stock cooler, then what's the point? And if the Wraith Spire is considered a "95 watt" cooler, then what's that say about the G100M's supposed "130 watt" capacity? It's probably an improvement over Intel's stock coolers, and perhaps even over the smaller, "65 watt" Wraith Stealth, which is only 54mm tall and lacks the Spire's vapor chamber, but it certainly doesn't seem like a $40 cooler from a performance standpoint. It performs more like a $20 cooler, with another $20 going toward a fancy-looking design and RGBs. And I do like how the cooler looks, but it definitely seems like a case of form over function.
 


I owned a CM 212 for a few years, too and that was a really good cooler. I switched to a Corsair H 100i water cooler back 2014 which was really good, too. But returned to back to air cool because of a mess a friend of mine had when his water cooler leaked. I purchased a Noctua NH-U12S and have excellent results. Don't get me wrong about the H-100i water cooler. My friend has a very elaborate set up which he cools a video card with his cpu. I may return to water cooling but right now, I feel safe with air coolers and that's just me.

 


That is a curious design. Sorta looks functional. Most PC cases are aerodynamically dysfunctional so configuring a how a case and cooler work together to get the maximum benefit of air flow is an art. I recall employing an air scoop (taping a cone facing front case fans) on a reference video card when I found out the radial fans can push more air than it's able to grab. I got a few degrees cooler, not much more. Lol, got the idea from an old guy who raced a dragster in the 60's. Said he used scoops on his engine's fuel injectors to help ram air. Sort of prevent vapor lock when a vacuum is present.
 


Scoops are mainly about ingesting cooler air instead of the pre-heated warmer air found under the hood. The colder the air, the more dense. The denser, the better and more HP you'll generate.

CPU's are not that much different in regards to delta T. Both engines and CPUs benefit from the largest temperature differential.

Air scoops can also act as ram-air if shaped properly. But their only good for high speed racing as it takes a good amount of speed before you can get an increase in positive air pressure being forced down a naturally aspirated engine. But that's not applicable for computers for obvious reasons. What you really want is the former. You want to channel the coldest ambient air possible to have a direct path to the HSF. Otherwise, pulling air from the case is already pre-heated from the MB VRMs, GPU, and other system components.
 
i hate this desgin! and also it's not reliable and looks ugly too... And results are bad either. Also it is covering the RAM's sockets.. So many disadvantages...
 
The voltage regulator. I've given up on the term VRM because it properly refers to the removable resistor pack (module) used on Pentium Pros. Modern CPU voltage regulators are PWM plus filters.

 


Say...what??!

VRM = Voltage Regulator Module

Dual socketed PPros have always had removable VRMs. They were removable because you could add one when adding a second processor later. Though I suppose they were also known for failure, hence needed to be replaced and not the entire MB?

Anyways, I've NEVER heard the the acronyms of VRM and PWM get interchanged. VMRs are for voltage regulation, and PWM refers to Pulse-Width Modulation with regards to fan RPM control.
 
Fact: It was modular. It is no more.
Fact 2: Pulse Width Modulation is not limited to fan control.
Less apparent was that it was the Voltage Resistor Module before we got all slangy with it.

Oh, and Level 0 isn't RAID 😉

 


So what's "PWM delta T" in reference too? I know that PWM fan control is based off Delta T values. Are you saying that's in reference to the voltage regulator? Because if so, that's very misleading semantics aside. At the very least, there should be some upfront clarification on that because I'm betting 99.99% of members on the forum here didn't catch the reference.



Not sure what else you're referencing. But in fact there is a RAID0 (striping) as defined by SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association)
 
It's the voltage regulator. And no, Level 0 is not Redundant, it's jut AID.

 


:/ Technically, you're correct. Redundancy implies fault tolerance. RAID-0 has neither. But that said, a RAID-0 volume is neither a JBOD or spanned volume. It's stripped, and it's an established technical standard. There is a difference.

Look, I'm not arguing over technicalities. But, there is an established lexicon within the industy. By all means, make the point to the contrary. But going rogue with the lexicon (and no further context) to a wider audience is confusing as can be. That's all.
 
I had to replace a liquid cooler system, in a machine that I bought from iBuypower. The original, was a brand I never heard of, which I find can be common in factory builds. I replaced that with a Corsair H 100i water cooler. I installed it a couple of years back, so I'm waiting for that one to fail at some point. In a machine I just built, I have an i7-7800X LGA2066. Instead of liquid cooling, I went with a Cooler Master Hyper212X Turbo cooler. I had heard that the i7-7800X can run pretty hot, but knock wood. The Hyper212 is doing a great job in a mid sized tower case with a total of seven fans running. The Hyper212 just barely fit into the case though! 🙂
 
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