We start of with the bigger of the two, the Hyper 212 Plus is based on the 212 cooler released in 2007 for the S775 platform. While the name difference is small, the actual product design has been completely overhauled. Not much remains of the original 212, except for the fact that it's a tower cooler.

Inside the cardboard box you'll find a manual, mounting gear, thermal paste, a PWM 120mm fan with new blade design, and of course, the new Hyper 212 Plus heatsink.

The fin design is no nonsense rectangular, with cutouts for small weigh reduction as well as slits for the fan mounting clips. A total of 4 U-shaped heatpipes are now DHT design as you can see on the picture on the right.

The included 120mm fan is rated at 2000rpm, at full blast it won't be silent, but being PWM and with the right fan controller, it will start up at only 600rpm and remain virtually silent. At the edges of the fan frame Cooler Master has placed rubber pads to reduce vibration noise.

Installation requires motherboard removal, no matter what platform you have, unless your case features a cutout (like the HAF922 pictured above). Metal bracket and screws will provide excellent mounting pressure and no worries of the CPU cooler (~630gram with stock fan) dropping of during transport.

The Hyper 212 Plus' rather slim design leaves enough room to navigate around the CPU socket and screw down the mounting bracket. The fan clips are for open-flanged 120mm fans only, keep this in mind when you plan on adding/swapping a fan.

Last word of device is regarding the mounting pressure, screwing all four screws to their maximum resulted in a NO POST of the system, releasing them a tiny bit brought the system back to live. This is not the first time we experienced this behavior when using heatsinks which provide a lot more pressure compared to the stock Intel heatsink. Keeps this in mind when you install the Hyper 212 Plus.