Testing & Conclusion

To install, I used the advice given in Benchmark Reviews' article Best Thermal Paste Application Methods. The article explains that the "Pea Sized drop" isn't necessarily the best method and to apply the T.I.M to our cooler I used a small line on each on the heat pipes. This resulted in a even spread of T.I.M across the base. Just remember that thermal interface materials were intended to fill the air gaps produced by machining and using too much can interfere with the results.

Installation of the all on one mount cab be kind of tricky. The back plate is labeled on each side. One side for Intel installations and one for AMD. For the Intel install there are stand offs that attach to the back plate through the mounting holes in the motherboard. The screws on the cooler attach to the standoffs. This is a nice touch as you don't have to worry about trying to hold a cooler as you try to feed and screw down the mount to the back plate. There are slots in the arms of the X mount for the different Intel sockets and to change positions pick up on the screw head and slide it to the proper location. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to tighten down the screws in the correct fashion. Start with one corner and tighten it down a little then move to the diagonal corner and tighten it down about the same amount as the first. As you are going through this sequence you should be making an X pattern. Tighten all four screws down until they stop. This has to be done with the fan off of the cooler

Installing the fan in the case was the tricky part but with a pair of long needle nose pliers and some patience it can be done. Locking the fan down to the cooler is similar to the Hyper TX3 as the wire clamps for the fan fit into a special channel on the vertical axis of each side of the cooler. Just plug the PWM connector into your motherboard and you're good to go.  
 

Room Temperature was kept at a constant 25°C and all case fans were set to low. The computer was booted and allowed to idle for 15 minutes. Any fluctuation in temperature resulted in an addition 5 minutes of idle time. Temperatures were monitored using Lavalys Everest Ultimate edition as well as the OCCT temperature monitoring. OCCT and prime 95 ran for an hour and temperatures were recorded at that point. Tests were run three times and the average temperatures were recorded.

Results

The Hyper 212 Plus performed admirably. The heat pipe direct touch really allows the cooler to flex it's muscle and keep the processor cool. At the stock speeds the temperature never hit 40 °C and even overclocked it was able to keep the temperatures under control and under 60 °C. The fan speed was manually set in the bios to "Standard" which spins the fan at round 1600 RPM. At that speed the fan was pretty quiet compared to the rest of the case.

The Hyper 212 Plus is CoolerMaster's latest heat pipe direct touch cooler and it performs well. CoolerMaster has done a fantastic job with this cooler and priced around $29.99 USD you really can't go wrong. It's aluminum construction also puts it up in the lighter weight coolers, even with the fan attached. Four copper heat pipes are able to wick away the heat effectively from the CPU and help ensure a long life even while overclocked. With this cooler, the CM crew also debuted the all in one mounting solution. The mount can be a little tricky to get installed. The backing plate mounts to the motherboard via a few standoffs  first and then the cooler mounts to the standoffs. And while it appears that the mount exerts adequate pressure on the CPU, you can still twist the cooler back and forth. The new blademaster fan with it's unique blade design was able to push quite a bit of air and still keep the noise level down. I am sure with PWM enabled sound levels with decrease even further, perhaps even silent to the human ear. All in all CoolerMaster has done an outstanding job with the Hyper 212 plus and earns the Editor's Choice award.