Pros:

• Cools 263W in long term loads on Intel i9-13900K
• Recessed fins for RAM clearance compatibility
• Excellent performance when noise normalized for silence

Cons:

• None!

About Cooler Master

Cooler Master really needs no introduction. If you’re reading this article, you likely already know who they are – being one of the largest players in the cooling market. Cooler Master not only supplies consumers but also provides cooling solutions for other companies. For example, Intel uses Cooler Master for it’s NUC products and many other OEMs incorporate Cooler Master cooling technologies.

The iconic Hyper 212 CPU cooler was released by Cooler Master back in 2007, when released it set the bar for budget air coolers – and even today it is still a popular cooling solution! Their HAF lineup of computer cases is a favorite of enthusiasts who prefer big cases with lots of airflow (I’m using the HAF 700 Berserker for my i9-13900K tests)

These days Cooler Master’s specialties doesn’t end with cooling products, they also make mechanical keyboards and immersive gaming products like the Orb X and truly unique custom cases like the Shark X.

Foreword

In the past I’ve mentioned how my past testing of coolers had focused on Intel CPUs because they were the most challenging to cool and also consumed the most power. When Alder Lake was released, I noticed that the thermal difficulty of cooling the 12900K was more difficult compared to prior generation products – only a few coolers were able to keep it under TJMax.

Intel’s i9-13900K and AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X CPUs can be even more difficult to cool in heat intensive workloads – and this trend is likely to continue with future generations of CPUs. As CPUs continue to shrink in size, thermal density rises, increasing the difficulty of cooling. Indeed, it is no longer worrying to run a desktop CPU at it’s peak temperature – it is to be expected in intense workloads (for example: rendering) without power restrictions or undervolting.

Introducing the Hyper 622 Halo Dual Tower Air Cooler

This year Cooler Master is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary, and there are quite a few things planned to celebrate this occasion! Today we’ll be looking at Cooler Master’s newly released Hyper 622 Halo CPU cooler, the first dual tower Hyper series CPU cooler which comes paired with Cooler Master’s newly released Halo 2 series fans.

Packaging and Included Contents

The 622 Halo arrives in a small box. The outside packaging is advertises the product (as to be expected), but the inner packaging is rather unique! Opening the box reveals the accessories (thermal paste, mounting, fan cords, etc.) in a plastic holding container.

Removing the top with the accessories reveals the cooler with it’s fans attached, protected by molded plastic and cardboard.

The plastic containing the cooler unwraps to reveal the Hyper 622 Halo.

Included with the package are

• Dual Tower Heatsink
• Two Fans
• Mounting for modern Intel & AMD platforms
• PWM Fan Splitter
• Small tube of thermal paste
• Manual

LGA 1700 Cooler Installation

Step One: Press the backplate against the rear of your motherboard

Step Two: Screw in the standoffs through the motherboard, into the backplate.

Step Three: Attach the mounting brackets and secure them with the included thumbscrews.

Step Four: Secure the cooler against the mounting brackets with a long screwdriver

Step Five: Attach the middle fan, and connect the fans to the PWM & aRGB headers.

Features of Cooler Master’s Hyper 622 Halo

Coldplate	Nickel-plated Copper
Thermal Compound	CryoFuse
Dimensions	125 x 137 x 157 mm
Heatpipes	6
Radiator Material	Aluminum Fins
Compatible Socket	Intel LGA1700, LGA1200, LGA1151, LGA1150, LGA1155, LGA1156 AMD AM4, AM5
Manufacturer Warranty	2 Years

Dual Tower Cooler

The Hyper 622 Halo is the first Hyper series cooler with dual tower radiators, delivering twice the surface area of previous Hyper series coolers for increased cooling capacity.

Recessed fins for RAM clearance

The fins of the Hyper 622’s heatsink are recessed at the bottom, allowing for increased RAM height compatibility.

6 Copper Heatpipes & Nickel Plated Copper CPU Plate

120mm Halo² Series fans

There’s more to a cooler than just it’s heat sink, the fans paired with a cooler have a direct impact on total cooling capacity and noise levels. Cooler Master includes two of it’s newest Halo 2 fans with the Hyper 622 Halo. These fans are optimized for strong performance at low noise levels, as you’ll see from the benchmarks.

Cooler Master advertises the following with these fans:

• 50% More lighting!
  • Larger LED rings increase lighting by 50% for even more vibrant lighting.
• Hybrid Frame Design
  • Redesigned frame structure and corner dampers maintain stability without sacrificing fan blade area for better performance.
• Improved Cooling Performance
  • Fine tuned P-Q Curve increase air flow and pressure while being even more quiet than its predecessor.

Size	120 x 120 x 25 mm/140 x 140 x 25mm
Speed	650-2050 RPM ± 10%
Blades	7
Airflow	Up to 51.88 CFM
Static Pressure	Up to 2.89 mmH₂O
Rated Noise Level	27 dBA
Bearing	Rifle Bearing
Connector	4-pin PWM
Lighting	aRGB support
MTTF	Over 160,000 hours

Test Platform Configuration

System Configurations Tested

AMD Ryzen 7000 Raphael Platform:

CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
Motherboard	ASRock B650E Taichi (sampled by ASRock)
Computer Case	DeepCool CK560WH (sampled by DeepCool)
Storage	1TB Kingston Fury Renegade
GPU	Intel ARC A770 LE (sampled by Intel)
RAM	32GB (16gb x2) Crucial DDR5-4800 (Sampled by Micron)
Comparison Coolers	(Click the links for previous reviews) BeQuiet! Shadow Rock 3 DeepCool AG500 DeepCool LT720 WH BeQuiet! Pure Rock LP EKWB EK AIO Elite 280 D-RGB Iceberg Thermal IceSLEET G4 Silent Iceberg Thermal IceSLEET X7 Dual Fractal Celsius+ S28 Scythe Kotetsu Mark 3 Silverstone Hydrogon D120W ARGB Thermalright Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB

Intel 13th Generation Raptor Lake Platform

CPU	Intel i9-13900K (sampled by Intel)
Motherboard	ASUS TUF GAMING Z690 PLUS WIFI D5
Computer Case	Cooler Master HAF 700 Berserker, system fans set to 35% (sampled by Cooler Master)
Storage	1TB Micron P3 Plus, 1TB Micron P3
GPU	Intel ARC A770 LE
RAM	32GB (16gb x2) Kingston Fury DDR5-6000
Comparison Coolers (See Tom’s Hardware for more comparison data)	(Click the links for previous reviews) BeQuiet! Pure Rock LP BeQuiet! Pure Loop 2 FX 280 CoolerMaster PL360 Flux DeepCool AG500 DeepCool LT520 Enermax Aquafusion ADV 240 Fractal Design Celsius+ S28 Prisma Enermax AquaFusion ADV Iceberg Thermal IceSLEET G4 Silent Iceberg Thermal IceSLEET X7 Dual Thermalright Frozen Notte 360 Thermalright Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X Thermal and Acoustic Results

For thermal results, I’ve tested the CPU in three configurations:

• Noise normalized to 36.4dba
• Default power limits
• 95W Power Limit
• 75W Power Limit

Noise Normalized Results

Performance only scales by a limited amount with improved cooling capacity with Ryzen 7000. This also means that there is less of a benefit to running fans at higher performance levels. As such, it can be useful to see how coolers compared when noise normalized for quiet, silent operation.

The improvements to the Halo fans are apparent in this noise normalized scenario for silent performance, as it is the best air cooler I’ve tested here! If you are looking for a cooler that excels at quiet operation, you can’t go wrong with Cooler Master’s Hyper 622 Halo.

Default Power Limits

At the default PPT of 105W, the most intensive loads can be difficult to cool and result in the CPU running at TJMax with anything less than the strongest coolers. DeepCool’s LT720 and EKWB’s EK Elite coolers are the only two I’ve tested (yet) which can handle that much heat. As such, we’ll be looking at two metrics in this situation where coolers run with the CPU reaching TJMax (95c): Noise levels and watts cooled.

Cooling 129.4 watts, this again is the best result I’ve seen from an air cooler (thus far) when tested on AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X. What’s more impressive is that it achieves this level of performance with a maximum system noise level of 42.7 dBA, which is much quieter than many other coolers when run at full speed.

Some of y’all might notice that the graph starts at 35 instead of zero – this is because my sound meter cannot measure noise levels lower than 35 dBA. Since that is the noise floor of this meter’s recording capabilities, 35 dBA is the “zero” for our testing purposes.

For those concerned that this might distort results – there’s no worry. If anything, the graphs above will minimize the differences in noise levels because dBA measurements are logarithmic – which means that the perceived total volume doubles every couple of dBA depending on the sensitivity of your ears.

BeQuiet! made a video explaining this relationship better than anything I could ever put into words, it’s embedded below.

95W PPT

Imposing even a minor power consumption limit on AMD’s Ryzen 7700X reduces cooling difficulty dramatically resulting in the ability to easily to cool the CPU under TJMax (95c), as such in these situations the total noise levels are more important. It’s also important to test in these TDP restricted situations, because most “real life” workloads will not push the CPU to it’s limits.

Like the previous tests, the Hyper 622 is the best result we’ve seen on an air cooler (thus far) when paired with AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X. In this scenario where the fan speed is tied to the default fan curve of the ASRock B650E Taichi, it is tied for the 3rd quietest result I’ve recorded.

75W PPT

Lowering the PPT to 75W further reduces the cooling difficulty, but at this power level thermal performance isn’t really a concern. Noise levels are more important here, and Cooler Master delivers a phenomenal result here – at 35.4 dBA, this is the quietest result I’ve recorded. Truthfully, it might actually be running quieter because my sound meter cannot measure under 35dBA.

Intel i9-13900K Thermal and Acoustic Results

No Power Limits

We’ll start by first looking at performance with no power limits enforced whatsoever. I’ve included some of the testing results I have submitted to Tom’s Hardware to give a better idea on how coolers compare to each other. These results are directly comparable because they were performed using the same system, by the same person (me!).

I’m only including the maximum watts cooled results from Tom’s Hardware in this article. If you’d like to see the rest of the comparison results with the coolers listed below, please check out my reviews there!

The overall cooling capacity results here are very good here, at 263W it is the 2nd strongest air cooler I’ve tested with Intel’s i9-13900K – falling behind DeepCool’s AG620 by 14W. While it loses in total cooling capacity to DeepCool’s AG620, it runs ~1.5 dBA quiter while doing so – which is not an insignificant amount.

200W Thermal & Acoustic Results

Most loads that common users run won’t use more than 200W, so this is a better analogue for a worst case scenario of what folks might actually see in day to day usage.

At “only” 59C over ambient the CPU isn’t throttling – but is amongst the warmer results I’ve seen in this scenario. If the noise levels were loud, I might consider this a bad thing – but at 41.4 dBA this is the 2nd quietest result I’ve ever had when the cooler’s fans are tied to the default fan curve of my ASUS motherboard.

All results shown on Boring Text Reviews are tested in an environment at 23C ambient temperature.

125W Thermal & Acoustic Results

When restricted to 125W, thermal performance really isn’t a concern – though I’ve included that information in the graph above. Really, any cooler should be able to handle this load – even Intel’s stock cooler!

Acoustic performance is much more important in this scenario and in this scenario the Hyper 622 Halo performs well, matching my quietest results I’ve recorded in this system while limiting to 125W – however, even with system fans restricted to 35% the system fans of my HAF 700 Berserker case makes 40.9 dBA the noise floor for testing. The Ryzen 7700X results posted above tested in DeepCool’s CK560 case show that this cooler can run much quieter than 40.9 dBA.

Conclusion

Cooler Master’s Hyper 622 Halo impressed me, which isn’t something I can say for many air coolers. It performs especially well when noise normalized for quiet performance, and is a great pairing for any modern CPU. If you’re looking for a quiet air cooler with strong cooling capacity, you can’t go wrong with Cooler Master’s Hyper 622 Halo.

The Hyper 622 Halo has a MSRP of €69,99 in the EU and $64.99 in the USA.