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Cooler Master Nepton 280L CPU Cooler Review

Cooling/Water Cooling by leeghoofd @ 2014-05-08

Cooler Master has been trying over the years to squeeze themselves into the all in one liquid cooling market; no spin-offs or re-brands as most AIO manufacturers offer. The in-house design makes these coolers stand out from the competitors offerings, however to be successful the AIO has to be a perfect combination of looks, ease of installation and of course most of all cooling performance at a low noise ratio. The Cooler Master AIO series have been hit and miss; especially the ease of installation was sometimes far fetched. With the Eisberg series Cooler Master has reached new performance heights for the AIO segment. Sadly the Eisberg lineup carried a hefty price tag due to the choice of high grade components. The Nepton series are CM's high end AIO coolers to fill up the gap between the Seidon series and the Eisberg models. Today we review the high end Nepton 280L version and compare it with the previously tested Corsair Hydro H110.

Test Setup and Methodology

Before continuing with the temperature results a brief word on the MadShrimps testbed which comprises of the following parts:

ASUS Rampage IV Extreme X79 motherboard
Intel i7-3960X OC'ed at 4500MHz 1.35Vcore
Corsair Vengeance Pro 32GB 2666C11
Western Digital 1TB Green Caviar HDD
ASUS GTX780ti videocard
Corsair HX1050W Power supply
Corsair Obsidian 750D case
Ambient air temperature is 20°C

Prime95 is our CPU torture test. By selecting the Custom test and setting 12-12K, we force the CPU to go straight flatout. After 60 minutes we verify in RealTemp the maximum load temperature results across the 6 cores. For the idle temperatures we just allow the system to warm up during a period of 15 minutes. Just basic idling at 4500MHz, doing nothing more then just monitoring the temperatures.

The monitoring software we use is RealTemp version 3. And the output results are the average out of three runs.

We compare the Cooler Master Nepton 240L versus the different Enermax and Corsair Hydro models. Secondly versus several air coolers: the single fan Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure, Thermalright True Spirit 120M, Scythe Ashura and the Zalman XPS14. Retesting the older Hydro versions ( read H50/70 ) on the socket 2011 platform might yield inaccurate results, partly due to the aging nature and abuse these AIOs have undergone throughout the years. The full blown do it yourself EK waterblocks L 360 kit is also included in the charts for comparison.

Noise measurement for the fans is done via Corsairs Air Fan Reviewers' Guide. Thus measuring the generated FAN noise at 1 meter from the FAN's front. Fans were hooked up straight to a PSU via a molex adapter. Noise tests are only conducted at 12V.

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