Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies. Type the characters you see in this image: Try different image Conditions of Use Privacy Policy © 1996-2014, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates As we said, this isn’t the most extreme cooler design, but it’s more than competent, delivering comfortable performance at stock. What’s surprising is that it managed to beat out the similarly designed Shadow Rock TF 2 from be quiet! The cooler is capable of overclocking, but the thermals at full load did pick up quite a bit. If you’re just gaming, then you can see that performance was perfectly fine, but running rendering applications is going to get hot pretty quick. Obviously, we’re clocked to 5GHz, and you could always stay at stock or not overclock quite as high. AcousticsThermal performance was pretty good for the size of this cooler, and the noise levels were great too. It’s a single fan design, and the fan didn’t have to work too hard either, clocking in at just 40 dBa max load. Pushing up the heat saw the fan hit 44 dBa, which is still really quiet for a single fan cooler. You could push the fan harder, but I’d honestly suggest just not overclocking so high on this cooler. Support eTeknix.comBy supporting eTeknix, you help us grow and continue to bring you the latest news, reviews, and competitions. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to keep up with the latest technology news, reviews and more. Share your favourite articles, chat with the team and more. Also check out eTeknix YouTube, where you'll find our latest video reviews, event coverage and features in 4K! Looking for more exciting features on the latest technology? Check out our What We Know So Far section or our Fun Reads for some interesting original features. A spiffy-looking low-profile air cooler with a UFO-meets-RGB theme, the G100M is a solid-enough solution for CPUs with TDPs of 130W or less. Just know that installing it will require some dexterity. Pros
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Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. Features & SpecificationsWhat better place to roll out a UFO-inspired CPU cooler than in Nevada? (Well, perhaps Roswell, N.M., but we'll settle for Area 51.) Cooler Master, at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, announced a new cooler for its air-cooling arsenal: the MasterAir G100M. Based on what looks like a 1950s-era sci-fi saucer, the G100M looks like it jumped out of a cheesy alien-invasion film. A sleek, rounded top and gentle curves slope downward to meet the angular fin housing, giving the cooler a low, wide profile. The MasterAir G100M comes ready for installation with most common AMD and Intel CPU sockets, but it does not have mounting hardware for AMD's Threadripper TR4. Mounting brackets and a universal backplate provide anchor points for the usual threaded standoffs and fastening nuts. An offset spanner wrench is also provided, with open and closed ends for securing the cooler during installation. A small syringe of Cooler Master thermal compound comes in the box, rather than a pre-applied splotch on the cooler base itself. Like most Cooler Master CPU cooling products, the G100M carries a two-year warranty. Cooler Master has equipped the G100M with a 90mm-diameter version of its RGB MasterFan, which you control via the included thumb remote, or handle in software; you can connect the fan directly to any standard four-pin RGB motherboard header for 16.7-million-color support. The G100M uses Cooler Master’s new "Heat Column Technology," which employs a 1.77"-diameter (45mm) copper column. It dissipates thermal load to the circular fin array in the same way that a large heatpipe does...at least, if the product webpage tells it like it is. The copper contact base of the G100M is relatively smooth, with a slight lateral grain milled into the surface. The copper contact plate is engineered as part of the copper heat column, which feeds up through the center of the nickel-plated mounting base. The aluminum cooling fins have an interlocking pattern that overlaps one fin to the next and radiates out from the central heat column, below the cooling fan. While it seems that a configuration like this would provide some added density and heft, to us the cooler feels like it lacks the expected mass for such a large copper column, hollow as it may be. The G100M has most of its mass at the base, and it feels relatively lightweight less than halfway up the cooling-fin array. The fan is four-pin/PWM-controlled, and the cable is covered in braided nylon sleeving. A four-pin RGB header is also present, built into the fan housing. An included Molex power splitter provides juice for the fan illumination; as mentioned, it is managed via the thumbstick control for those of us without on-motherboard RGB-lighting support. The MasterAir G100M features several lighting-display options that you can manipulate via the included thumbstick control. These include static color selection, color cycle, intensity, flashing, mirage, and a "breathing" cycle. The central fan hub houses the primary LEDs, while an opaque outer ring provides a coordinated color accent. The G100M is meant to be a low-profile CPU cooler, and at just under 3" in height (75mm), it seems to hover just over the motherboard, once installed. Which brings us to the next detail: the installation of this low-profile cooler. InstallationWhile Cooler Master has employed its usual threaded-standoff-and-bracket mounting system, the G100M is wide enough that the cooling fins overhang the mounting posts, which require hex nuts to fasten down. With memory DIMMs on both sides and a motherboard heatsink on a third, we struggled with small, incremental turns using the included spanner wrench to secure the hex nuts. We found the closed end of the wrench too limiting in angle to fit easily under the cooler and over the surrounding hardware. While the open end of the wrench worked better, it constantly slipped off the nut heads, especially when trying to get the final turns torqued down. Ideally, it would be easiest to mount this CPU cooler prior to installing the motherboard in a case, unless you happen to have excellent dexterity. Also, given that the cooler is low-profile in design, taller memory DIMMs nearby might have clearance issues. We realized that while our system memory partially blocked what would seem to be the easiest path of access to the nuts, it would also be difficult to install the cooler before the DIMMs, due to the low overhang. Once all of our tests were completed, we removed the cooler and observed the thermal-paste patch and CPU contact area. After all the struggle of installation, we can confirm that the G100M was, in fact, making good contact with the CPU heat spreader, as we saw a consistent, expected spread of the Arctic MX-4 compound we used. MORE: Best CPU Cooling MORE: How To Choose A CPU Cooler MORE: All Cooling Content Garrett Carver is a contributor for Tom’s Hardware, primarily covering thermal compound comparisons and CPU cooling reviews; both air and liquid, including multiple variations of each.
Needs more heat pipes. ... I do find it a bit strange that the VRM wasn't better cooled. Perhaps the motherboard is not well-designed for down-draft coolers. Needs more everything. To be fair it's a lightweight LP cooler so it's really aimed at compact systems. But yeah between the motherboard layout and the dinky fan I'm not that surprised the VRM temps suffer. Reply CrashmanThis one should have been reviewed by compact case and cooling editor Chris Miconi. Reply barqscreamsodaY'all should really be embarrassed by this testing. Why would you even waste your time putting a SFF cooler rated at 130W on a system that is probably running at 250W TDP? I could have made that chart for you without running the tests. Also, 110 degrees over ambient? Were you running this test in a walk in freezer, or are these numbers wrong? Reply
Crashman 20888406 said: I think Mr Carver forgot that Chris Miconi was doing these on his Mini ITX 1151 rig. The reason is probably that Miconi has been producing so little content that Garrett didn't know he was still on the roster. Would you like me to request a retest, or would you rather have us just let this one fade into oblivion? |
