Cooler Master Nepton 140XL Liquid CPU Cooler Review

PRODUCT ANALYSIS

SYSTEM CONFIGURATION:

• i7-3770k
• Biostar TZ77XE4
• 8GB Mushkin Blackline DDR3-1600
• Gigabyte Windforce Radeon 7970
• Thermaltake TR2-RX 1000W PSU
• Kingston 96GB SSD (OS)
• WD 160GB Caviar Blue (storage)

The ring around the CM logo lights up in white only (however I’m sure there will be modders out there that will be changing this) and it’s not overly bright at all – just enough to give some ambient lighting.

TESTING METHODOLOGY

All tests are run using Arctic Silver Alumina thermal compound for comparison purposes. The CPU and heatsink is cleaned with Arctic Clean and Arctic Silver Alumina is reapplied. Tests are run at stock (3.5GHz [with 3.7GHz Turbo Boost]) and a moderate OC at 4.5GHz (no Turbo Boost). The system is left to idle for 30 minutes and a baseline temperature is recorded using CoreTemp. A Prime 95 blend test is then run for 30 minutes and the temps are recorded again.

The recorded temperature is the average of the 4 cores. Since ambient temperatures can affect CPU temperature readings ambient temps are recorded during idle and full load testing. The ambient temperature is then subtracted from the recorded CPU temperatures resulting in a Delta T measurement, (or how many degrees above ambient the CPU cooler keeps the CPU). This levels the field for different ambient temperature tests.

Under stock clocks the Nepton 140XL performed pretty well. Don’t let its position on the chart fool you – it’s only 0.75ºC behind the current leader. Let’s turn up the heat and see how it holds up.

Under a moderate OC the Nepton 140XL fell back just a tad coming in at 2.5ºC behind our leader, but it was by no means horrible. The sound output from the Nepton 140XL was near silent at idle and loud but not obnoxious under full load. Let’s wrap up this review with some final thoughts.