Review: Cooler Master Hyper N520
First, I am no expert on CPU cooling and this is just a limited review of what I am seeing after a day of use. With that noted…
I bought the Cooler Master Hyper N520 ($39.00) from Fry’s Electronics on the recommendation of the tech guy I was talking too to place in the new computer I was building. I didn’t want to stick with the standard OEM fan from Intel, my experience is they are pretty much garbage when you put the processor under a solid load. I also know that a quad core (have a quad at work) is a pretty hot animal. So I got this behemoth of a cooler… I was actually worried it wouldn’t fit in the case and at nearly 7” tall you have to worry about case size.
As I noted in my 2010 Developer Machine post I looked at the temperature that the OEM fan put out prior to installing the N520. With the CPU having run for a few minutes and mostly just idling, I saw a temperature of 62° C (144° F). After installing the N520 and software I got a temperature of 31° C. I had the Core i5 under full load for 2 hours using Prime95 to search for prime numbers (load testing) and I haven’t gotten above 54° C. Then within 5 minutes the temperature has returned to 31° C (core 4). Interesting that Core 4 is always the hottest and core 1 the coolest under load or at idle.
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