Cooler Master's New Dual-Tower Cooler has 135mm and 120mm Fans
Noctua's NH-D15 has new competition
Cooler Master has unveiled a new high-performance dual-tower CPU cooler known as the MasterAir MA824 Stealth. This new cooler is the company's most powerful air cooler to date, with more heat pipes, a new copper heat pipe technology, and a better-optimized fan configuration compared to its other dual-tower designs.
A notable highlight of the MA824 Stealth is the inclusion of two different-sized fans to accommodate RAM clearance. The middle fan is a beefy 135mm design, while the front fan is more modest 120mm. The middle fan is designed to push and pull as much air as possible over the MA824's massive fin stack, while the outer fan is designed to clear the height of most RAM modules with compatibility of up to 45mm.
Both fans are designed to be silent, with a maximum noise level of up to 24.6db at 1550RPM for the 135mm middle fan and 22.6db at 1950RPM for the 120mm front fan. Thanks to the large jump in RPM speeds on the 120mm fan, both fans have nearly identical airflow rates with a rating of around 63 CFM.
The MA824 Stealth comes with eight copper heat pipes in total and features a new type of copper heat pipe technology that Cooler Master is calling "superconductive composite heat pipes." These enhanced heat pipes use a dual-variable heat pipe thickness with a groove and powder wick structure that improves thermal dissipation by up to 30% over other coolers, according to Cooler Master.
The cooler is also equipped with a larger nickel-plated copper baseplate that will help support larger Intel and AMD CPU designs going forward. Cooler Master did not state how large the baseplate was, but it looks like it might be able to support AMD's very large Ryzen Threadripper CPUs with enough surface area to cover all of the separate dies contained in the chip.
The MA824 Stealth is just one of several new MasterAir designs featuring Cooler Master's new superconductive composite heat pipe technology. Other upcoming products include the MasterAir 412 Stratos, MasterAir 612 Stratos, and MasterAir TD4 and TD5. Cooler Master has yet to reveal pricing or availability for any of these products, including the MA824 Stealth.
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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.
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brandonjclark So the different fan sizes are ONLY to clear RAM modules? It HAS to hamper performance some, right?Reply -
TechyInAZ brandonjclark said:So the different fan sizes are ONLY to clear RAM modules? It HAS to hamper performance some, right?
Depends on perspective.
With the perspective of Cooler Master's previous air coolers, no it does not. Previous designs used dual 120mm fans, while this new cooler features a much larger 135mm fan to compensate for any cooling loss its 45mm RAM height clearance might incur.
Technically, based on fan size alone, this cooler is better in every way... -
TechieTwo IME dual fans only drop the CPU temp ~5-10 F so they could probably use all 120mm fans and achieve the same result but we all know that "Bigger is Better" so you get the best of both fan sizes this way.Reply -
bit_user
You can make up for smaller size with higher RPMs or more blades with higher torque... or some combination.brandonjclark said:So the different fan sizes are ONLY to clear RAM modules? It HAS to hamper performance some, right? -
Albert.Thomas
No, that's not the only purpose. Many high end coolers incorporate a 120-140 pairing for a "vortex" effect, which is supposed to increase static pressure.brandonjclark said:So the different fan sizes are ONLY to clear RAM modules? It HAS to hamper performance some, right? -
Albert.Thomas We'll have a review of this cooler posted to the site soon. I've finished testing it on Intel's i7-13700K, this weekend I should have the results with AMD's Ryzen 7 7700X completed.Reply