- Back to homepage
- Related articles
  Related articles

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 Results

We hooked up the two 140mm fans via the splitter to one of the Rampage IV Extreme Fan headers. Similar to the Enermax Liqtech test setup we chose to test again on the silent, optimal and performance BIOS preset.

Silent mode: max +/-1100rpm
Optimal mode: max +/-1400rpm
Performance mode: max +/- 2000rpm

At IDLE, the Cooler Master Nepton 280L is right where it should be, leading the charts together with the other 280 AIO, the Corsair Hydro H110. No matter if we ran the Silent preset or the let us refer to it as unfit for living room operations: the Performance mode, the Nepton 280L is able to best or even surpass Corsair's high end model. The 360 Do It Yourself EK Waterblocks kit remains comfortable in the lead, though imagine an AIO of this quality with a 360 radiator.

With the I7-3960X running the Prime95 Stress Test on the 12 cores, things heat up pretty quickly. The air coolers are running on their toes to keep our particular processor stable. A similar outcome for the Cooler Master Nepton 280L in regards of performance. Slightly outperforming the Corsair Hydro 110 in the Silent Mode. With the Optimal preset set in the BIOS, the Nepton 280L bests the H110 unit. Once we crank up the Fan speeds to 2000rpm the temperature drops another 2 degrees Celsius, though the generated noise level is than far from acceptable for daily operations.

Talking about noise we measured a whopping 47dBA at maximum speed of 2000rpm (Performance mode in the charts); dropping the RPM to 1400rpm level the noise generated was lowered to 40dBA. At the silent BIOS preset the noise meter indicated 38.5dBA. The Nepton 280L has got great cooling capabilities, even when running the fans at moderate to slow speeds, thus running the JetFlo fans at maximum speed could only be required when benching.

If one intends to use this Nepton 280L for daily usage it would be wise to hook up the fans to a fan controller. or by steering the rotational speed via either the BIOS or the included motherboard software. Running these fans flatout is far too noisy for daily living room usage.

No comments available.

All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.