CoolerMaster Hyper 101 review

When I first picked up the CoolerMaster Hyper 101 cooler I had fairly high hopes for it.

I mean, I'm quite well aware that in compatibility terms alone it's not that impressive; covering only CPUs with a TDP of 70W or lower, but a cheap, effective cooler is nothing to be sneezed at.

Particularly as a host of AMD's processors come in below the specified 70W. Unfortunately all was not as rosy as I'd hoped.

The big problem I have with this cooler is the price. With the incredible Freezer 7 Pro still only going for £15 from Arctic Cooling (the people tasked with making sure AMD's overclocked Radeon HD 5970s don't burn a hole through your case), asking for more than £20 for this ultra-basic cooler seems a bit much.

True, the 70W limit is a bit conservative as we were happily cooling a dual-core Phenom II, rated at 80W, without any problems at all, maxing out at 39°C. But with the small fan attached to the heatsink it does make a bit of a racket in CPU cooling terms.

If it was more of a low-profile cooler I could almost forgive it, but it stretches to the same height as a standard graphics card rendering it ineffective even for small-form factor cases.

The whine, price and limited compatibility on offer unfortunately makes the Hyper 101 a rather irrelevant little cooler.

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