Table of contents
Test
As expected in the 790FX testbed with the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition the temperatures under Prime95 exceed the maximum temperature specified by AMD. The i7-900 series is as hot as this CPU, so it would be wise not to use this cooler for such CPUs. Running just games, where the CPU cores are not at 100% load, the cooler is able to cool the CPU, but you have no headroom left for overclocking. If your board is able to reduce the VCore at 1.25V the cooler does well. The i5-750 gets not that hot, so even a nice overclock to 3.6GHz is possible. Still we do recommend not to use this cooler for CPUs with a TDP higher than 95W.
Conclusion
For such a small cooler the results are good. The only downside is the noisy fan. Cooler Master should do something about it and invest some resources to get the fan at lower noise-levels. The same cooler design with a 12cm fan would have faired much better. The cooler is not on the market yet, but the recommended retail price is €24,90 sounds like a bit too much. Similar products from Scythe and Arctic Cooling are available for about €15,-. If you need a small cooler for a small chassis to replace the box cooler, you may consider this cooler and change the fan, otherwise go with a cooler with a 12cm fan, which will provide better performance and lower noise.