Cooler Master Hyper 212 Halo

Introduction

Cooler Masters Hyper 212 is one of the most iconic go-to air cooler of the last decade. Equipped with their newest Halo v2 Fan, Cooler Master 2023-ized their iconic choice. Let's take a closer look at the Hyper 212 Halo and see how it stands in 2023.

What's in the Box?

Cooler Master's newest 2023-ized Hyper 212 Halo CPU Air cooler comes inside a rather standardized Cooler Master package covered in the usual Cooler Master-themed colors, specs, and some imagery.

Once everything is unboxed, we will be left with the following items:

• Hyper 212 Heatsink
• MF120 Halo2 Fan
• Fan Clips
• Installation Hardware AMD & Intel
• Thermal Paste

Interesting to note here is that Cooler Master included only 1x set of fan clips instead of the usual 2x for a potential future dual fan mode. The heatsink on the other hand still has the necessary indentations to be used with a fan on each side. 

Down below you will also find a short summary of the coolers specs:

Compatibility

Given that the cooler was released not so long ago, we will find the mounting hardware for all the nowadays still relevant coolers. Down below you will find the full compatibility list:

Individual Components

Fan

The Fan that comes with the new Hyper 212 Halo cooler is Cooler Masters similarly named MF212 Halo2 fan. Spinning at up to 2050 RPM whilst pushing up to 51.88 CFM at 2.89mm/H20, it seems like a reasonable choice for a heatsink of this thickness and density.

The fan is powered using a 4-pin PWM connector for fan speed and a 3-pin ARGB connector for the lighting. Both cables are braided and about 30cm long.

Although the fan looks quite standard, though the LED implementation is surprisingly good, there is a special hidden feature. Instead of purely relying on the usage of an ARGB connection, the fan has an Auto-RGB function which allows it to showcase a preset mode once the fan is spinning. By relying on the power provided by the PWM cable, the fan will automatically start shining in a Rainbow color, allowing users that do not have a 3-Pin ARGB connection available to use the fan with all of its features.

Heatsink

The heatsink of the Hyper 212 Halo is an all-black (or all-white) 154mm high single tower consisting of 50 fins resulting in 11 to 12 FPI.

At the top of the tower Cooler Master installed a matt black cover with stripes and a Cooler Master Logo, a quite nice looking esthetic touch.

Thanks to the heatsinks' relatively thin nature, there are no ram restrictions occurring with or without a fan.

Base

Similarly to the original Hyper 212 Evo, the new Halo edition comes with the same 4- Heatpipe direct touch base, a type of connection best used on mid-tier workloads.

Appearance

Overall, the Hyper 212 Halo Black looks incredibly clean. Thanks to the all-black heatsink paired with the matt black cover and its esthetic accents, the cooler looks modern without seeming pretentious.

The additional RGB omitted by the fan looks surprisingly well-implemented. The LEDs are visible even when strong light is shining on them, while the transitions between different colors look incredibly fluid.

Benchmark

We benchmarked the cooler using our new CPU Cooler Benchmark Machine featuring 3 different Workloads at 320, 250, and 120W. For the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Halo, only the 120W workload applies as the cooler was unable to keep the CPU below Thermal Throttling once the 250W mode was being used.

120W

On the "light" workload at 120W, the Hyper 212 Halo managed to keep the 13900K at 39.2°C above ambient. This positions the 4-Heatpipe cooler only 0.9°C behind the similarly sized Arctic Freezer 34.

Slowly reducing the fan speed whilst noting down the Noise and Temperature resulting in an interesting comparison to the Freezer 34. Whilst the Freezer 34 was slightly better on higher rotation speeds, once both fans were spinning below 70%, the Hyper 212 Halo managed to take over and reach noise floor slightly faster.

Compared to slightly thicker coolers like the Dark Rock 4, or the dual-fan version of the Freezer 34, the Hyper 212 Halo obviously does not stand a chance.

Conclusion

Performance-wise, the Hyper 212 Halo with its updated MF120 Halo2 Fan performed roughly as we expected. It is easily comparable to Arctics Freezer 34 counterpart. However, each of them is better in a certain way, while the Freezer 34 can push things slightly further, the Halo2 Fan can do it slightly quieter once all the fans are spinning slower.

On the design and quality side, we believe Cooler Master did a fine job. The cooler looks modest while maintaining a modern design, and the RGB implementation looks solid.

A great feature that we wish would become an industry standard is Cooler Masters' so-called "ARGB Auto Detection". A simple way of using the power provided by the PWM connection to light up the LEDs if no ARGB connection is present. We believe this is a great way to allow everybody to use the lights, even if the system is much older and theoretically not compatible.

Price-wise, we wished the cooler would have ended up being slightly less expensive. As of 05/08/2023, the cooler would cost us between 40€ and 42€ depending on the color choice. Although we believe this to be a generally acceptable price for the quality and performance, but for that price we could also acquire an Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo, a dual fan cooler that beats the Hyper 212 Evo in every category except for its lack of lightning.

However, if price-to-performance isn't as important to you as the design and RGB, we can still recommend the cooler for entry- to mid-tier CPUs. AMD 7600, Intel 13600, and even K, are all good combinations for a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Halo. For CPUs that (can) push more watts through the socket, or if your workload requires a cooler capable of cooling down 200W+, we would recommend looking for bigger contestants.