yeah yeah if i’m if i’m laughing when i go on camera all the better right yes but these yeah three two one go these allergies are seriously kicking my butt guys but at the same time i wanted to talk to you guys quickly about something that keeps on coming up on the comment threads in a lot of our cooler videos and that is this little guy and this is the cooler master hyper 212 evo and you might not know this but we go into these comment threads and we read through all of them in order to get advice for things that you might want to see and that might really spark our interest too and the reason why the 212 evo sparked my interest is it hits all those high points for me right now i’m not really excited believe it or not about a new 500 graphics card that nobody’s gonna be able to buy or processors that go out of stock immediately rather i really like the cheap inexpensive things that can make a huge impact on your everyday computing and that’s where this little guy comes in it’s inexpensive you can find it pretty much anywhere but it’s also been around for 10 years so i was really interested to see how this two and two evo that everybody’s requesting stands up on a modern system in 2021 so we’re gonna get to that right after a message from our sponsor the new n7b550 gaming motherboard from nzxt is something out of the ordinary the clean aesthetics with the metal cover is a minimalist dream come true you get a built-in i o shield and headers that are laid out optimally for a simple plug-and-play setup the n7 also supports third-party rgb accessories through cam software available in both black and white
models as well as intel and amd learn more down below well i guess the first step is really getting to know the 212 evo a little bit more and i have to say this right off the bat this cooler is not meant to compete with super high-end solutions from noctua from be quiet from arctic rather this is really meant to replace your stock boxed cooler so with that being said it is a little bit larger as well we’re looking at something here that’s 120 millimeters wide 158.5 millimeters high and 77 millimeters deep with the fan installed normally you would think that that would eliminate all of the memory compatibility issues and compatibility issues with the cases but not so fast on that one but with that being said the nice thing about it is that right now you could probably get this anywhere for between 30 to 35 dollars u.s and sometimes you can even find it for less than that which makes it an insane value if you can find it on sale at micro center amazon canada computers wherever you buy your components but then again that’s the beauty of this thing is that it’s literally available everywhere but let’s talk about that design just a little bit because it’s really really basic but it’s also a callback to 2012 when the evo was first introduced back then hdt or heat pipe direct technology was all the rage and right now you can still usually find it on higher end air coolers when it’s done really really well like on the arctic freezer 50 and then again you can also find it on entry level heatsinks like this one and a lot of other ones because it does tend to be a little bit cheaper to produce but on the other hand it is supposed to help transmit heat faster at lower heat loads which is super important for mid to low end
cpus this thing is going to be installed on and maybe that’s why the a500 that we saw from corsair which was such a failure ended up doing relatively good at those lower heat loads those heat pipes on the other hand they go up into the aluminum fin array and that’s pretty much it like i said there’s nothing fancy here just plain old engineering that’s on display for you to see and the fan is pretty basic too i mean look this thing doesn’t have any rgbs or color on it it maxes out at 2000 rpms at 36 decibels and that’s pretty much it the nice thing about it though is that it doesn’t come with your typical fan clips it comes with these plastic clips which are so much better than anything else but i’m going to sort of like talk about that later but i also want to address sort of like the elephant in the room and that’s how cooler master has sort of modified this over time there’s now a v2 version of this that isn’t quite as widely available but it’s out there and it costs just a little bit more so that v2 version isn’t meant as a replacement for the original 212 evo rather it’s being sold right along in parallel with it but there are a bunch of improvements that you need to know about to make a more informed decision about what is the v2 version and what is the original 212 evo well the v2 version comes with a new step-back heat pipe design for a little bit better memory compatibility along with a revised mounting kit and guys that is super important like you’re going to see pretty soon because the
original 212 evo has an ancient mounting kit that’s just a kit of parts and a paint in the butt to install there’s also an updated sickle flow series fan for better acoustics and airflow at lower rpms but i’m going to try and recreate that with a separate sickle flow fan that i have from another cooler master cooler and install that onto the 212 because we couldn’t actually find a v2 version in time for this video i should also mention that the v2 is at least here in canada 15 to 20 dollars more expensive than the original 212 evo which might not sound like a lot but in the grand scheme of things when you’re buying a really affordable heatsink it actually is quite important now on the other hand there’s also this guy which is the well no no we’re we’re rolling we’re rolling there’s also this guy which is the black edition so the 212 black edition man oh man but anyways so the one reason i don’t like this version of the cooler other than the fact i mean look it’s black it looks beautiful but is these mounting clips i actually find that even though this costs a few bucks more than the two and two evo these mounting clips are an absolute pain in the butt i really prefer the plastic ones on on this one now at the same time the black edition also has a larger base it also has an upgraded fan as well and the actual price difference believe it or not even though it is typically more expensive it actually costs about the same amount as the original 212 evo if you can find it on sale now that other way i really want to go into the other room and go through the installation
process with you guys on an amd motherboard but i also wanted to mention before we get in there that this cooler is 10 years old and its installation process is really starting to show its age and that’s exactly what i wanted to show you guys and maybe help you guys avoid some of the issues that i’m sure that i’m gonna come across so let’s get to that all right so here we are in the shop and this is the first part of the installation process and we’re probably gonna have to do this in multiple takes because this is a pain in the butt so the first part after you sort of remove that amd back plate is to flip the motherboard over and use cooler masters metal back plate after that you take one of these studs that you’ve put the the plastic washers on and i mean look this is the the way that i’ve been able to do it the best after multiple installations is you sort of thread that bolt through the motherboard while holding your motherboard for all that you’re worth and just pop it on like that then finally there’s one of these tiny tiny lego sized screws that you want to put on there and you gently thread it on with your fingers now you don’t want to actually put this on too tight but because what will happen is that one side of this back plate will actually start popping up making the installation of the rest of the screws absolutely impossible so you can
actually see right there i tightened it too much it popped up so it comes down then the next part of the process is to do all four of them and expect to swear and curse for the next couple of minutes so that’s exactly what i’m gonna do we’ll see how many times i screw it up we’ll speed this up let’s get at it all right guys we needed to cut that out a little bit because there was way too much swearing going on in this room for it to be appropriate on youtube anyways the next step is to take this little adapter that cooler master so kindly gives you and to finish tightening these up with a screwdriver you can use a wrench but most wrenches won’t really fit in the small space that’s provided another thing i need to mention as i tighten these up and sort of pray that nothing else goes wrong is some of these bolts might actually start pivoting in their sockets and if that happens you simply go behind the motherboard and sort of hold on to them for dear life as you tighten up on the top of the motherboard and i’m really hoping that doesn’t happen here okay so it’s actually tightening up which is good now i have to say that cooler master has gone out with that v2 version which improves this by miles and miles and miles so if you don’t want to go through this and you’re willing to spend maybe a few dollars more getting that v2 version is 100 the way to go now the next step that we’re going to do is turn the motherboard over and actually install the cooler after all of that all right so the next part of the installation process is probably gonna be the most frustrating if you didn’t read the instructions it’s to put the crossbar in the amd position feed it through the interior and you see this
little pin right here this will actually line up to the amd position on the bracket you drop it in and you’re basically ready to go and place it onto the motherboard final part of the installation process is pretty straightforward it’s just to place the cooler over the cpu and start tightening up this little bracket is going to want to shift around a lot and i mean a lot so you have to keep everything in place as you go around and tighten up each one individually very very slowly and a little bit on each corner so with the cooler install i want to talk a little bit about the fan and you’ll see that it has these plastic fan clips and yes they aren’t as durable as the metal ones that ship with a lot of other coolers but at the same time you don’t have to worry about them falling off all the time when you’re trying to manipulate the fan finally there’s also memory clearance now this is a relatively small cooler but if all of your memory slots are populated on an atx motherboard or if you’re using something in the itx size that last memory slot cannot be populated now the v2 version of this cooler does bring the whole affair a little bit further forward so you have a hundred percent memory clearance but at the same time if you’re just using a standard atx layout with a couple of memory modules installed you should be perfectly fine so that pretty much wraps up the installation with that out of the way i guess it’s time to move on to performance but before we get into the nuts and bolts of that i really wanted to mention again this cooler is not meant to compete with high-end solutions it’s meant to basically replace your stock cooler give you lower temperatures and lower decibel readings or less noise but at the
same time you also have to remember that this engineering has lasted the test of time so obviously there’s got to be something to it especially since you guys are all recommending that we look at this again in 2021 to do that we’re going to be using a new test system for entry-level coolers in a closed case using a ryzen 9 5950x that’s been modified to run at three different thermal loads so basically 95 watts should cover a lot of lower to mid-range cpus operating at their stock frequencies 125 watts on the other hand really aligns with slightly overclocked mid-range processors or even higher-end ones running at their stock speeds and 150 watts well look we know that there isn’t going to be a lot of entry-level cpu coolers that are going to be able to run at this level but at the same time if one of them does they get a gold star and now the competition is going to be pretty straightforward because we haven’t received a huge catalog of entry-level coolers yet on the other hand we’re going to be using an octo u12s as a baseline for basically where the higher end air coolers lie there’s also going to be a hyper 212 black edition just to give us another baseline about where the 212 evo should be aligning on the other hand there’s also andes race stealth because that’s one of the most popular box coolers right now that’s still available with the processors also as we go through the charts here’s a bit of a cheat sheet to show you what fan speed percentage aligns with each of the decibel readings i’m going to show in the charts now at 95 watts right away the hyper 212 evo shows some really really impressive results guys i mean sure the u12s is a good four degrees cooler at super low fan speeds but as decibel levels increase they start running neck and neck
the interesting thing here is the evo is also slightly better than the black edition and yeah i ran this test a bunch of times with different mounts and the result was pretty much the same every single time but then again normalized out to 38 decibels and the only real loser here are the box coolers that do keep the cpu from throttling but that’s about it they’re running at super high temperatures right away i should mention that 90 degrees is our temperature cutoff in every test since amd’s pbo feature will start throttling power past that and we don’t want any current amd or intel cpu running constantly above that anyways so in this case the spire couldn’t pass a single run at any decibel level which is understandable since it’s rated to top out at 95 watts anyways but at 125 watts the evo starts falling further behind the black edition and u12s at lower fan speeds which is probably because its fan is more optimized for moving air at higher rpms but that also means it has to get louder than the other two coolers in these charts in order to deliver the exact same or competing temperatures and on the other hand we also have to remember that this thing costs only about 30 bucks if you can find it for that price and that aligned with the other coolers here makes it one of the best values that we can possibly imagine of course at 150 watts the evo gets pretty much overwhelmed since it can’t move the heat away from the cpu fast enough even when working at maximum chooch level but look this was pretty much expected
since this version of 202 was never ever designed for this type of heat load but right now this test is here simply to set the stage for some really really interesting roundups i’ve got planned in the future but at the beginning of this video i also talked about that 212 evo v2 and i wanted to sort of replicate what you might be able to expect from performance from that cooler on the regular 212 evo so i basically stuck one of these guys on and this is a sickle flow fan that you would get with the v2 the exact same specs everything else that i pried off of a sort of like cooler back there from cooler master and with that in place i’m hoping that it’ll improve performance and give you at least some idea of what you could expect from that v2 so let’s get into that at lower decibel levels at least adding that upgraded fan lowers temperatures by a constant two to three degrees at 95 watts but those benefits really do start leveling off as the fan speeds increase it’s the same thing at a higher wattage 2 which points towards the 212 evo v2 being a better all-round cooler but is it worth the extra money well that really depends on how much you value a few degrees and a bit quieter
operation plus it really doesn’t make much of a difference when the coolers are overwhelmed at higher heat loads anyways so i guess that really brings me to this conclusion and i’m going to say that the 212 evo it surprised me i mean 10 years later in 2021 we’re seeing this cooler still perform really really well and it’s priced so much lower than a lot of the other coolers on the market right now now is it perfect absolutely not the installation is an absolute nightmare there’s a couple of times that i actually cut myself you can’t actually see it while trying to install this thing on the other hand from a value perspective it’s really something that i can get excited about and i can wholeheartedly recommend this thing if you can get past that installation process and i guess that’s pretty much it i mean thank you guys for recommending this thing i’m so happy that i got it in even though it’s been around for 12 years and i’ve been doing this behind the scenes for something like 15 years now i’ve never had the opportunity to check this out so again thank you guys if you want to recommend more stuff please do it in the comments below because man having these high value items that cost very little that really gets my blood pumping so i guess i’ll see you in the next one and like i said please leave some comments below about what else i can look at and get excited about have a good one
