Battle of The CPU Stock Coolers! 7x Intel vs 5x AMD, plus an EVO 212
by E. Fylladitakis on July 22, 2016 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- CPUs
- AMD
- Intel
- Cooler Master
- Cooler
The Cooler Master EVO 212
The Cooler Master EVO 212 is the “special guest” of this review. We included it because it is one of the most popular mainstream coolers, combining good performance with broad compatibility and a very reasonable retail price. Although we do have one more aftermarket cooler in this review, it comes from a CPU manufacturer and is essentially based on the designs of their stock coolers, so the EVO 212 is the only cooler that greatly stands out from the rest.
The EVO 212 is a tower cooler with four copper heatpipes and a vertical 120 mm fan. It is designed to absorb the thermal energy away from the CPU and transfer it to wide aluminum fins using the heatpipes. Then the energy is being transferred to the airflow generated by the fan more effectively, as the surface of the many parallel aluminum fins greatly outweighs that of most stock coolers.
What makes the EVO 212 so efficient and popular is the direct contact design. The heatpipes come in direct contact with the CPU’s surface, increasing the energy absorption efficiency. Copper is soft and easy to damage, thus this design has greatly inferior mechanical strength than most other tower designs that have the heatpipes supported inside a metal base, but this has virtually no shortcomings for most users that will not be mistreating their computers (as well as being indicative of the pricing).
Other than the direct contact heatpipes, the EVO 212 has no other advanced features. Naturally so, as the company wanted to keep the manufacturing cost low. The aluminum fins are inserted to the copper heatpipes and not soldered, while the base is not machined down to a perfect finish. The cooler’s A12025-16RB-4BP-F1 120 mm fan is a small surprise, as it has a rifle bearing engine, an enhanced version of sleeve bearing designs for lower noise and higher durability.
| Vendor | Cooler | Common Bundle | Core | Fins | Fan (mm) |
Mass (g) |
| Cooler Master | EVO 212 | Aftermarket, ≈$30 | Cu +4 Cu HP |
Alu | 120 | 436 |
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tarqsharq - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
I mean, the last few Intel processors I've bought didn't even come with stock coolers.Having a good stock cooler bundled in the cost of the chip shaves another 20-30% off the cost of lower end chips, which matters in budget builds.
SantaAna12 - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
Really?Your choice is just baffling to me.
Your fired.
Unbelievable.
HexiumVII - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
That wraith has some pretty surprising numbers and a name to match. Too bad it looks like a dinky stock fan, they just need to jazz it up a little more and it can beat a lot of the cheap aftermarket stuff out there.barn25 - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link
Hey that EVO 212 is the same cooler i have!Ascaris - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link
Delta over ambient doesn't work. The increase in ambient is not 1:1 with the increase in CPU temp. It's closer to 1:1.5.bj_murphy - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
Third page, 3rd picture down, caption should be "Intel C25704-002 and D75516-002"...? Currently says "D57516-002"bj_murphy - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
** D75716-002 not D75516-002...Hooray for more super memorable model numbers from our favourite confusing hardware manufacturer, Intel!
mikato - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
Any info about the fans?Please put the voltage on the noise level graphs next time as well since I was confused about that at first until I noticed the entire page was about 12v or 7v. It's good to see that the Wraith may be relatively loud at 12 volts, but is in line with the rest at 7 volts. I just wish I had a good way to translate this somehow to idle and load noise levels when it's actually on a CPU.
I agree that AMD should offer the better heatsink/fans with their non-top level CPUs as well. The reason I bought good heatsink/fans in the past was for lower noise and it really pays off there.
Riley-NZL - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
No Intel Socket 2011 Stock coolers?Byte - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
Interesting the copper core for the stock 7379 barely helps 1 degree compared to the all aluminum.