Cooler Master MA620P Review

Cooler Master has sent for Cooler Master MA620P Review. This is a dual tower configuration in 120mm sizing. The cooler comes with two MF 120mm RGB fans featuring 16.7M colors and 6 lighting modes. They are fully compatible with the leading motherboard manufacturers’ onboard lighting solutions.

Cooler Master was thoughtful enough to include a dedicated lighting controller that would allow the users who don’t have lighting headers on their motherboards to use the full RGB lighting functionality on these fans. The cooler has a provision for an additional 120mm fan for 3 fans configuration should a user want that much of a cooling power. We also tested other CPU coolers from the house of Cooler Master like; MasterLiquid ML360R, MF120 Halo and much more.

Cooler Master MasterAir MA620P CPU Air Cooler Review

The towers have plastic covers on their top with cooler master branding making the overall look and feel of the cooler premium and that well in person. Out of the box, the cooler is compatible with almost all Intel consumer sockets including LGA 20xx and AMD’s AMx sockets including AM4 excluding TR4. This cooler features 6 copper based heat pipes and Continuous Direct Contact 2.0 technology for better heat dissipation with 45% more surface area.

This cooler comes in two versions; one is a simple MA620P which we are reviewing and the other one is TUF edition for Asus TUF motherboards under Gaming Alliance.

• Item:                Cooler Master MA620P Review
• Manufacturer:   Cooler Master
• Category:         CPU Air Cooler
• Price:               Check Price on Amazon

MA620P Specifications

MA620P Packaging and Unboxing

The cooler is shipped in a cardboard box in MasterAir category styling of purple and black colors which does look good in person. The front side of the box has cooler master ma620p review brand logo on the top left. RGB enabled fans with 16.7M colors and compatibility with various lighting solutions from leading brands is printed on the top right. There is a beautiful picture of the cooler in the center.

Controller picture is above the bottom confirming that this cooler comes with a dedicated controller. Mode of the cooler is printed at the bottom. The backside of the box has salient features of the cooler printed in 8 different languages. There are block diagrams at the bottom showing the dimension of the cooler. The top side of the box has cooler master ma620p review brand logo printed on the top left and model of the cooler printed at the bottom left side.

The left side of the box has the specifications of the cooler printed in a tabular format. EAN, UPC, and serial no stickers are printed/pasted at the bottom. The right side of the box has three pictures printed on it showcasing the feature highlights of the cooler like CDC 2.0 technology, dual tower design, dedicated lighting controller.

The bottom of the box has company’s contact information printed on the top side and CPU Cooler information at the bottom in 14 languages.

Opening the box will show a white color container having all the accessories inside. There is a white color cardboard box packing placed in front of the accessory box which serves a dual purpose. It complements the overall looks and provides safety for the accessory box. Removing both of them will show a thick black color Styrofoam packing covering the Cooler. Removing it will show the complete unit. The fans are pre-installed on the heatsink.

Masterair MA620P Contents

Following are included:

• 1x Heatsink
• 1x Intel/AMD Backplate
• 1x Spanner/wrench
• 1x RGB Controller
• 1x Molex Cable
• 1x MasterGel Pro Thermal paste
• 4x Standoffs
• 4x Intel LGA-20xx Screws
• 4x Hex Nuts
• 4x Intel/AMD Screws
• 4x Arm covers for Intel
• 4x Arm covers for AMD
• 2x Intel Mounting Brackets
• 2x AMD Mounting Brackets
• 2x Small Screws
• 2x Fan Mounting Clips
• User Manual and Warranty Guide

M620P Cooler Master Closer Look

The M620P is a new flagship from cooler master ma620p review in the Master Air category as it takes over the MA610P which is a single tower design. The cooler features CDC 2.0 technology which is coupled with 6 copper heat pipes in dual towers to give 45% more surface area for effective heat dissipation. We will see how much of a heat dissipation we are talking about here in the testing section.

We have recently reviewed their MA G100M CPU Cooler and found its mounting/installation mechanism a bit non-user friendly. Same installation mechanism is followed in MA620P. I wish Cooler Master comes up with a better installation mechanism. Being a flagship cooling solution in air coolers category, I am expecting it to perform that well. Here is what the Cooler Master is saying about their flagship cooler, “The MasterAir MA620P is built for extreme cooling performance.

Based on the legendary Hyper 212 heatsink but with the twin tower design, the heat dissipation power and performance have doubled. With six heatpipes and Continuous Direct Contact Technology 2.0 (CDC 2.0), this is an engineering masterpiece. Two MasterFan MF120R RGB make it not only silent and effective in heat transfer, but also the most vibrant and exciting option when it comes to CPU air cooler.

It is perfect for multi-graphics platforms and overclocking. If you are looking for an exceptional air cooler that delivers great performance, silence, and fun RGB lighting, the MasterAir MA620P is for you.”

It is time to dig into the design of the cooler. The dimension of the cooler is 136.1×121.8×164.5mm. The height of the cooler with both fans is 164.5mm. The dimension of the heatsink is 116×110.1×164.5mm. Heatsink alone weighs 850gm. Both RGB fans come pre-installed on the heatsink using black powder coated metal clips.

Both towers have an identical layout. There are 64 aluminum fins on each tower stacked in a dense manner. The dimension of a tower without the top plastic cover is 110x109mm. With top plastic cover, the height is 124mm. Please note that these are the dimensions of the heatsink with aluminum fins only excluding the base and heat pipes.

Each heatsink has a width of 40mm making each a slim version. Looking at the heatsink, it is clear that fins are implemented in a stepped manner (with two steps exactly). I believe this has more to do with the aesthetics than the performance. The heat pipes inside the heatsink have equal distance among them. There is no jointed assembly on the front or the back side rather the fins are held together through within the heatsink implemented assembly.

This approach makes the overall look of the cooler much cleaner. Looking at the heatsink from the side, there is a distance of approximately 27mm between both towers. Cooler Master has provided a provision to install a third fan should the user want to go that route. Two additional clips have been provided in the accessory for this purpose.

Looking at the sides of the heatsink, they are identical on the left and right sides on both towers. The center is recessed which is for the reason to catch the hooks of the fan mounting clips from either side. The inside portion of the heatsink jointing the fins can be seen clearly from here. Looking at the top, there is a black color plastic cover on each tower.

It is in an angular shape with one side having raised surface than the other side. The recessed side has 3 circular caps covering the top of the 3 heat pipes. The raised surface side has vents underneath it. This is likely for airflow purpose if not for any other use. The overall design is symmetrical and the raised surface has Cooler Master brand logo on it.

Looking at the base, there is an aluminum plate which also acts as a heatsink for it has 10 fins on its upper side. This plat has a dimension of 76.4×37.6mm. It’s both ends have a mounting hole in the center on to which the Intel/AMD mounting brackets are installed. Looking at the base, we can see total 6 heat pipes on each side. They are copper based and have a thickness of 6mm each.

3 heat pipes are going in the left side of the heatsink and 3 in the right side with equal distance to ensure the maximum coverage of the surface area for effective heat dissipation. This cooler is using the Continuous Direct Contact 2.0 technology. In CDC the copper heat pipes make a direct contact with the heat source which in our case is the CPU. This technique eliminates the copper base which is a more common solution in the coolers.

The copper base makes contact with the heat source and heat pipes make contact with the copper base but in CDC the heat pipes make a direct contact. Also, note that this direct contact method is based on a continuous approach. In Continuous DC, there is no gap between the heat pipes at the point of contact with the heat source. In a Non-Continuous DC, there is a gap between the heat pipes at the point of contact with the heat source.

This gap is usually filled with a copper base. We can expect better thermal heat transfer in Continuous DC than in Non-Continuous DC. There is a transparent warning sticker pasted on the base cautioning the user to remove it before installing the cooler. The dimension of the contact surface on the base is 35x35mm.

Now that we have taken a look at the heatsink design, let’s have a look at the fans as well. The Cooler Master ma620p review has bundled two MF120R RGB fans with this cooler. Each fan measures 120x120x25mm. Its rated speed is 600~1800 RPM ±10%. Our sample at full speed was operating at 1850 RPM. Fan airflow is 53.4 CFM ± 10%. Air pressure is rated at 1.65mmH₂O ±10%. Noise level is rated at 31 dBA. It has a 4-pin PWM connector.

The fan is rated at 12VDC with 0.30A rated current. The safety current rating is 0.37A. The fan’s power consumption is 3.6W. The fan’s MTTF is massive 160,000 hours which is roughly equal to 18.26 years on a 24/7 hours run. There are two cables coming out from the fans. One is the 4-pin power connector having a length of 291mm approximately and the other is 4-pin RGB LED cable having a length of 53mm approximately.

The reason why the length of the LED cable is much less than what usually is, is that cooler master ma620p review has bundled a Y-LED Splitter cable having a length of 467mm which is enough to reach either the bundled controller or to the motherboard’s RGB Lighting header. There is a fan Y-splitter cable having a length of 227mm approximately.

Looking at the fan from the front side, there are 9 transparent impellers. The trailing edge of each impeller has raised surface. The center hub is also transparent. The RGB LEDs are located inside the hub. The fan’s frame is circular in design with four mounting hubs in almost a trapezoid shape. Each mounting corner has anti-vibration rubber pads which are cut to shape to ensure symmetrical design.

The backside of the fan has 4-arms assembly with one arm widened to form a path for cables routing. Two flat cables are coming out of the fan’s hub. There is a dark gray color sticker pasted on the hub with Cooler Master brand logo printed on the top. MasterFan 120 AB is printed. AB stands for Air Balance version. The fans are made in China.

Cooler Master has bundled an RGB controller to control the lighting effect of the cooler. The RGB LED cable can be attached directly to the motherboard’s RGB enabled header (12V one) or can be connected to the bundled controller. Wise thinking on the Cooler Master’s part as not everyone would have such motherboards, particularly in the microATX/mini-ITX versions. These LEDs are not addressable and operate at 12V.

Following lighting modes are available using the bundled controller: –

• Static
• Stars
• Cycle
• Breathing
• Cycle Breathing
• Mirage

The lighting effects are right on the money and I love the colors. It is not overly done and has even lighting for smooth and better visuals. Users can customize the looks as per the build’s color theme though personally, the purple color looks that good in person on this cooler. The brightness of the lighting can be controlled as well in 4 steps.

Installation

I have tested this cooler on Intel LGA2011-V3 socket (X99). Below are the installation guides for Intel LGA 2011-V3 and LGA-1151 (300 generation):

LGA2011-V3

Following are the steps for this socket installation:

• Install the LGA-2011 screws on the mounting holes around the CPU Socket
• Install the Intel mounting brackets on to the Cooler’s base using two small screws. Make sure that brackets are pointing outwards. Consult the manual before installation.
• Take off the warning sticker from the base of the cooler.
• Apply thermal paste on the CPU Surface.
• Place the cooler on the CPU by aligning the holes on the mounting brackets’ heads with the screw.
• Secure the cooler by using the hex nuts. Hand tight them till no further possible and go diagonally for even pressure.
• Use the supplied spanner/wrench to fully tighten the hex nuts. Patience is a virtue!
• Connect the 4-pin PWM cable to the CPU fan header or any of your desire fan header.
• Connect the 4-pin LED cable to the controller or RGB header on the motherboard. Make sure to match the small arrow symbols on the same side. Arrow side is the 12VDC.
• This would complete the installation.

LGA1151

Following are the steps for this socket installation:

• We have to prepare the backplate for this socket. The included backplate has one side for AMD and the other for Intel. Markings are printed on these sides for reference. For Intel, make sure the side with printed AMD is facing the motherboard’s backside.
• Each corner of the Intel arms on the backplate has a large cutout with three markings. The middle area is for the Intel LGA115x. Pass the standoff through the middle of these cutouts. Don’t worry about the exact location of the standoff at this moment.
• Use the clips to slide them inside on each Intel arms. This would secure the standoffs where you would want them to be. Now, pull the standoffs to the exterior most as this would set them to be used on this socket.
• Now, place the backplate on the backside of the motherboard such as the standoffs go through the mounting holes around the socket.
• Install the 4x Intel/AMD screws on the standoff. Hand tight them. The backplate will have a flex giving the impression that it is not mounted properly. This is expected behavior as it will be firmly secured once the cooler is installed so don’t worry.
• Install the Intel mounting brackets on to the Cooler’s base using two small screws. Make sure that brackets are pointing outwards. Consult the manual before installation.
• Apply the thermal paste on the CPU surface.
• Take off the warning sticker from the base of the cooler.
• Place the cooler on the CPU by aligning the holes on the mounting brackets’ heads with the screw.
• Secure the cooler by using the hex nuts. Hand tight them till no further possible and go diagonally for even pressure.
• Use the supplied spanner/wrench to fully tighten the hex nuts. Patience is a virtue!
• Connect the 4-pin PWM cable to the CPU fan header or any of your desire fan header.
• Connect the 4-pin LED cable to the controller or RGB header on the motherboard. Make sure to match the small arrow symbols on the same side. Arrow side is the 12VDC.
• This would complete the installation.

Cooler Master Clearance and Installation Notes

The installation of this cooler is tricky particularly on the Asus Rampage V Edition 10. I would suggest taking out the RAMs and to install the cooler outside of the chassis. The provided small wrench/spanner is not convenient to use on the hex nuts when there is less space available to use. The spanner is a straight line design making it more difficult to use in cases with heighted I/O shroud or VRM covers.

The hex nuts have a height of merely 3mm or so which adds more complexity to the equation. I ended up removing all the RAM modules, and the graphics card on this particular motherboard.

The Republic of Gamers LED plate sits very close to the CPU Socket which makes it difficult to install the cooler. Even this is only with this motherboard, the overall installation mechanism needs a redesign for the users’ convenience. Even on the LGA-1151, you should install this cooler outside of the chassis and without any RAM.

This cooler has a height of 164.5mm so make sure to check the CPU height clearance of the chassis under consideration before pulling the trigger. Now, coming to the RAM height clearance, I have used the Ballistix Elite 4x4GB kit. This kit has a height of 40.75mm and I had no issue with respect to the fan or the heatsink.

But in case you would want to use a RAM kit with more height then the height of the fan can be adjusted to create height clearance of up to 53mm.

This cooler was not obstructing the first PCIe 3.0 x16 slot.

Testing

Following test bench was used for testing this cooler: –

• Asus Rampage V Edition 10
• Intel i7 6850k
• Crucial Ballixtics Elite 4x4GB @ 3000MHz
• Nvidia GTX 1080 FE with Alphacool Eiswolf GPX Pro
• Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
• WD Black 6TB
• Corsair AX1200i
• PrimoChill Praxis WetBench

Following software were used for the testing and monitoring.

• Asus Real Bench v 2.44
• Real Temp GT v 3.70

The thermal paste being used on the test bench is the Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste. The use of a same thermal paste for all coolers will ensure the standardization and mitigate any performance benefit that may come using the supplied thermal paste. Delta temperatures are reported on the graphs. The cooler is tested on stock clocks i.e 3.6GHz using 1.136V manual VCore.

The Asus RealBench 2.44 is used to stress test the cooler’s performance. Each run was of 60 minutes. Each run of the test was of 15 minutes followed by 15 minutes break to let the system cool down. Fans were set to run at their 100% RPM. CPU is overclocked to 4.3GHz with 1.350V manual Vcore. Three test runs are made. Average of each test run is calculated.

The max temps on each core are summed up and divided by the core count to give the average figure. The max average of three tests is used for reporting. Delta temp are calculated by subtracting the ambient temp from the max average temp.

Let’s take a look at the results. On stock clocks i.e 3.6GHz at 1.13V, the cooler was idling at 3°C. Under stress test, the cooler was doing delta 30.3°C. There is a marginal difference between this cooler and Reeven’s Okeanos which is also a dual tower.

With overclocked chip at 4.3GHz using 1.350V, the cooler could not keep it up as temperatures were in the upper limit of the 80s. The chip was idling at 3.12°C and under load, it was doing 46.17°C. I was expecting it to perform better than this.

I could not measure the sound level of the unit as the summer season here is at peak and ceiling fan plus the noise coming out of the room would invalidate the actual sound level. Based on my experience with the fans and coolers testing so far, the fans were audible but not teasing at all.

Conclusion

The Cooler Master MasterAir MA620P is their flagship cooling solution at the moment super ceding the MA610P. The cooler features dual tower design in U shape and comes with two MF120 R AB versions to compliment the performance with the better looks. The dimension of the cooler is 136.1×121.8×164.5mm. The height of the cooler with both fans is 164.5mm. The dimension of the heatsink is 116×110.1×164.5mm.

Heatsink alone weighs 850gm. Both RGB fans come pre-installed on the heatsink using black power coated metal clips. Each fan measures 120x120x25mm. Its rated speed is 600~1800 RPM ±10%. Our sample at full speed was operating at 1850 RPM. Fan airflow is 53.4 CFM ± 10%. Air pressure is rated at 1.65mmH₂O ±10%. Noise level is rated at 31 dBA. It has a 4-pin PWM connector.

The fan is rated at 12VDC with 0.30A rated current. The safety current rating is 0.37A. The fan’s power consumption is 3.6W. The fan’s MTTF is massive 160,000 hours which is roughly equals to 18.26 years on a 24/7 hours run. There are two cables coming out from the fans. One is the 4-pin power connector having a length of 291mm approximately and the other is 4-pin RGB LED cable having a length of 53mm approximately.

The reason why the length of the LED cable is much less than what usually is, is that Cooler Master has bundled a Y-LED Splitter cable having a length of 467mm which is enough to reach either the bundled controller or to the motherboard’s RGB Lighting header.

Each tower has 64 aluminum fins. There is no external fins joint assembly but this is done within the stack to give much cleaner looks. The left and right sides on each tower are identical with the center being recessed to catch the fans’ mounting clips. The front and rear sides of each tower are identical with one half recessed than the other half.

Each tower has a black color cover on its top with on half recessed than the other. The recessed half has three circular caps covering the three heat pipes on that end. The raised surface side has vents in an angle. There is a Cooler Master brand logo on top of each of tower. There are 6 copper based heatpipes in each tower each of 6mm thickness.

They align with the heatsink in an evenly manner to cover the maximum surface area for effective heat dissipation. There is an aluminum plate the base which also acts as a heatsink as its top has 10 fins. This cooler is using Continuous Direct Contact 2.0 technology in which the copper heat pipes make direct contact with the heat source and there is no gap between the pipes at the point of the contact. This direct contact helps with quick heat transfer for effective dissipation and better cooling.

Cooler Master has included two RGB LED fans with this cooler master ma620p review. Both are PWM controlled. Cooler Master has bundled LED splitter cable and Y-splitter cable as well. There is a dedicated RGB Controller as well which is really nice as it covers the users who don’t have RGB lighting headers on their motherboards.

Fans can also be connected to the enabled 12V RGB header on the motherboard and is fully compatible with the Asus AURA Sync, ASRock RGB LED Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, and MSI Mystic Lighting. There are 6 predefined modes using the dedicated controller. Colors are bright and even. One observation that I made setting the custom shade of purple color set the two tones on the LEDs which is quite apparent.

Cooler Master is offering two years of warranty on this cooler. However, Shing is not offering any warranty on these coolers. I have tested this cooler on Intel LGA2011-V3. This cooler master ma620p review can handle a medium overclocking.

Mind you that Intel i7 6850k is a 140W TDP chip. For lower TDP chips, this is a sufficient cooling solution for sure. The closer air cooler in the local market is Thermaltake Riing Silent Pro which is listed at 6300/- at the time of this cooler master ma620p review. Though we have not yet tested this cooler, it is obvious that Cooler Master is offering better value product in this price range with the RGB goodness being a plus.

I am thankful to the Cooler Master for giving the opportunity to review their MasterAir MA620P.

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