Introduction

Today we are reviewing Cooler Master Hyper TX3, a CPU cooler with a tower design, three heatpipes and a 92 mm fan. How will it perform?

In Figure 1, you can see Hyper TX3's package. It is actually a plastic blister, showing the cooler, just like the Vortex 752.

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Figure 1: Blister.

Inside the blister package we found the cooler, the fan, user manuals, installation hardware and a gray thermal compound tube.

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Figure 2: Package contents.

In the next few pages we will take a closer look at TX3.

Cooler Master Hyper TX3

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Figure 3: Front view.

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Figure 4: Side view.
 

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Figure 5: Top view.

Cooler Master Hyper TX3 (Cont'd)

In Figure 6, you can see the fan attached to the heatsink. You can notice the small rubber pads in the fan corners, intended to reduce vibrations and noise.

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Figure 6: Fan installed.

The fan, seen in Figure 7, has a four-pin connector, with PWM speed control.

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Figure 7: Fan.

On the cooler base, the heatpipes keep direct contact to the CPU. This system has proven to be an efficcient choice, eliminating one thermal resistant layer. Unfortunately, this base is not very smooth, and there are small spaces near the heatpipes, which demands more thermal compound in the installation.

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Figure 8: Base.

Installation

TX3 installation is pretty simple. To use it with AMD CPUs, you just need to use the clip shown in Figure 9, holding it to the motherboard frame.

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Figure 9: Clip for AMD CPUs.

To install the cooler on socket 775 and 1156 Intel CPUs, you need to attach four clips on the cooler base. Those clips have two positions, one for socket 775 and other for socket 1156, where the motherboard holes are positioned a little far. In Figure 10, you can see those clips without one screw, so you can have an idea how those two positions are.

Once the clips are in place, you just need to fasten the cooler to the motherboard the same way the Intel stock cooler.

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Figure 10: Clips for Intel CPUs.

In Figure 11, you can see how it looks inside our case. It did not interfered with any component of our motherboard, but it is tall and will not fit slim or SFF cases.

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Figure 11: Installed into case.

How We Tested

We are adopting the following methodology for our CPU cooler reviews.

First, we chose the CPU with the highest TDP (Thermal Design Power) we had available, a Core 2 Extreme QX6850, which has a 130 W TDP. The choice for a CPU with a high TDP is obvious. To measure the efficiency of the tested cooler, we need a processor that gets very hot. This CPU works by default at 3.0 GHz, but we overclocked it to 3.33 GHz, in order to heat it as much as possible.

We took noise and temperature measurements with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to achieve 100% CPU load on the four processing cores we ran Prime95 with the "In-place Large FFTs" option, and three instances of the StressCPU program, all at the same time.

We also compared the reviewed cooler to the Intel stock cooler (with copper base), which comes with the processor we used, and also with some other coolers we have tested using the same methodology.

Temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer, with the sensor touching the base of the cooler, and also with the core temperature reading (given by the CPU thermal sensor) from the from the SpeedFan program, using an arithmetic average of the four core temperature readings.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the video board cooler so it wouldn't interfere with the results, but this measurement is only for comparative purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core 2 Extreme QX6850
• Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD3L
• Memory: 2 GB Corsair XMS2 DHX TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX G (DDR2-800/PC2-6400 with timings 4-4-4-12), running at 800 MHz
• Hard drive: 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST3500320AS, SATA-300, 7200 rpm, 32 MB buffer)
• Video card: PNY Verto Geforce 9600 GT
• Video resolution: 1680x1050
• Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
• Power supply required: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
• Case: 3RSystem K100
  

Software Configuration

• Windows XP Professional installed on FAT32 partition
• Service Pack 3
• Intel Inf driver version: 8.3.1.1009
• NVIDIA video driver version: 182.08

Software Used

• Prime95
• StressCPU
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2 ^oC error margin, i.e., temperature differences below 2 ^oC are considered irrelevant.

Our Tests

On the tables below you can see our results. We ran the same tests with the coolers shown on below tables. Each test ran with the CPU idle and the with the CPU fully loaded. On BigTyp 14Pro, TMG IA1, NH-U12P and ISGC-300 the tests were done with the fan at full speed and at minimum speed. The other coolers were connected directly to the motherboard and it controls the fan speed based on CPU load level and temperature on PWM models. ISGC-400 and iCEAGE Prima Boss were tested at minimum speed on idle test and at maximum speed on full load test.

The next graph will give you an idea on how many degrees Celsius the CPU core was hotter than room temperature during the tests, in idle.

The next graph will give you an idea on how many degrees Celsius the CPU core was hotter than room temperature during the tests, under full load.

 

Main Specifications

Cooler Master Hyper TX3 main features are:

• Application: Sockets 1156, 775, AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939 and 754 processors.
• Fins: Aluminum.
• Base: Aluminum, with heatpipes in direct contact to the CPU.
• Heat-pipes: Three U-shape copper heat-pipes.
• Fan: 92 mm.
• Nominal fan speed: 800 to 2,800 rpm.
• Fan air flow: 54.8 cfm.
• Maximum power consumption: 3.12 W.
• Nominal noise level: 35 dBA.
• Weight: 1.04 lbs (470 g).
• More information: http://www.coolermaster-usa
• Average price in the US*: USD 20.00

* Researched on www.newegg.com on the day this reviews was published.

Conclusions

Something curious happened during our Hyper TX3 testing. The first sample we received from the manufacturer showed very bas results. The performance was so poor that our CPU entered Thermal Throttling mode even while idle. We contacted Cooler Master, which said it could be a defective sample, and sent us another one, which worked just fine. The first sample was actually a defective one.

In our tests Hyper TX3 proved to be a cooler with good performance. It did not cooled our CPU as good as top shelf coolers, but the cost/benefit ratio proved to awesome. Besides that, it has an excellent noise level and a very practical installation on Intel or AMD CPUs.

So Cooler Master Hyper TX3 CPU cooler deserves the Hardware Secrets Silver Award.