Page 2 - Physical Look - Hardware; Installation
The Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P ARGB may have ARGB in its name, but it looks a bit more reserved with nothing plugged in. Instead, we have lots of black plastic with many translucent parts to allow the rainbow lighting to pass through. The top is shielded with a black plastic cover to hide the top of fin stack. Cooler Master's logo can be found in the middle and surrounded by another translucent outline. This is clearly going to be a blinged-out lightshow when the heatsink is plugged in and turned on, but for now it looks typical of any other CPU cooler. I think there is a bit more plastic than I would like on a cooler, but then again, I am pretty used to a simpler stack of heatsink fins and a fan slapped on it. On the other hand, this makes the cooler quite tall. Otherwise, this uses a typical single stack of fins with two fans attached, with one on each side, to push air through. The entire unit is made up of a mixture of copper and aluminum on the heatsink fans as well as the plastic on the fans and the top cover.
Despite being only a single tower, the Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P ARGB is a pretty big CPU cooler. The fins are not exactly visible from this point of view, but there is a flat edge on each side of the fin stack. The fins are paired up into 27 double fins for a total of 54 fins. There also is a bit of fin stack cut away to allow some cables to pass through the stack of fins. The spacing between each fin is just a bit over 2.0mm and each fin is generally spaced evenly between each other. From my calculations, the total surface area of the cooling fins combined is approximately 0.76 square meters, which is smaller than the previously reviewed MasterAir MA624 Stealth. At a total mass of 909g with the two fans installed, this is still a pretty weighty cooler, even if it is lighter than the aforementioned MA624 Stealth. For some perspective, a typical Intel stock cooler is a lightweight at 330g, while the AMD Wraith Prism stock cooler weighs 582g. Most of the weight can be attributed to the material choices of the heatsink itself, as you will also find out later.
The two fans mounted on either side of the Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P ARGB are mounted with plastic clips integrated into the fan construction directly. This means that swapping these fans out for your own ones will not be viable unless you create your own fan mounting solution. On the other hand, the integrated clips work well to hold the fans in place while also being easy to install. You will need to unclip and reclip these fans during the installation process, but we will explore this later on. In its default placement, the fan on the intake side hangs over one of my memory slots, but it does not interfere with the top PCI Express slot.
In terms of dimensions, the Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P ARGB dimensions are pretty big with a height of 170.4 mm, width of 130.9 mm, and depth of 112.8 mm. You may run into troubles installing this into a slimmer computer enclosure. I personally was a bit concerned when installing this into the Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact, which mentions a limitation of 169 mm in height, but the MasterAir MA610P ARGB was just under the glass panel. The MasterAir MA610P ARGB is symmetrical and, with a fan attached, it hovers over one of the memory slots. This could lead to some compatibility issues as there is approximately 4.3cm of space between the bottom of the base to the bottom of the overhanging fan. I think Cooler Master could have addressed both the height and clearance issue by cutting away some of the extraneous plastic on the top of the cooler and the bottom fan rim. Alternatively, they could have also adjusted the heatsink fin stack to be asymmetrical to avoid the overhang altogether.
From the base where the metal makes contact with the processor, six continuous U-shaped heatpipes lead away from the CPU contact and into the single stack of fins. This effectively makes twelve heatpipes in total. The heatpipes are supposed to efficiently lead the heat away from its source due to the low heat of vaporization, or phase change energy, of the fluid inside. The heatpipes are aligned in manner to spread out the heat in the array of radiating fins. The 0.76 square meters of surface area, combined with the two 120mm SickleFlow ARGB fans, should be able to deliver very good heat dissipation performance, but we will see if this statement is true on the next page.
As for the fans in question, we have two 120mm Cooler Master SickleFlow fans. These fans use rifle bearings internally and operates within a range of 650 to 1800 RPM, maximum airflow rating of 62 CFM, and maximum static pressure of 2.52mmH2O. While traditional rifle bearings do not necessarily boast the longest life, these ones offer up to 150,000 hours. As mentioned previously, these fans are attached with integrated fan clips that are part of the whole frame. Due to the appearance of this cooler, you probably will always want to have both of these fans installed, but I personally would have liked to see wire clips for more flexible placement and the use of more stock designed fans so that users can swap out their fans when they so desire. It should be noted that even though both of these fans face outward, one is in a reverse direction to keep pushing and pulling air in one continuous direction.
The photo above shows a shot of the bottom of the Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P ARGB CPU heatsink. The configuration of the heatpipes more clearly in relation to the base leading into the fin array. You can see the base is very flat, which means practically the entire base should rest evenly on top of the processor. A quick inspection also reveals there are no abnormalities here, although on closer inspection, you can see the finish here with a radiating circular mark to flatten the surface. The base and heatpipes are built using copper for best heat transfer ability with a thermal conductivity of 401 W/mK. This copper is not plated with nickel, which is often done on higher-end CPU coolers for durability. The heatsink fins utilize aluminum as it is a bit lighter in comparison to copper. This compromise allows the MasterAir MA610P ARGB to reduce its weight and thus reducing the stress on the motherboard. Aluminum has a thermal conductivity of 237 W/mK, which is not as optimal for heat transfer, but the trade-off is understandable.
Additionally, all the joints are cleanly soldered at the base while the heatpipes use pressed fins. This is pretty typical for most heatsinks, but this may lead to degradation over time as contact between metals decreases due to thermal expansion and contraption. Overall, the Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P ARGB is built well, with only a bit of give on some of the fins. It is nothing out of the ordinary, but could slightly affect performance later on. As mentioned previously, Cooler Master offers a two-year warranty should anything go wrong.
The installation of the Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P ARGB is generally straightforward, but there was one point that you should be aware of. I will walk you through my process and highlight the easy and more tricky parts. Starting at the back of the board, we have a plastic backplate to be used with either Intel or AMD motherboards. Users can install the necessary parts into this backplate and secure the mounting standoffs with plastic caps. If you are using an Intel motherboard, be sure to flip this backplate over before installing it into place.
On the other side, users can mount the appropriate nuts into the right place over the protruding standoffs. Next, users will need to mount arms onto the MA610P ARGB, depending on if they are using an Intel or AMD system. The mounting arms have two spring-loaded screws that will then mount onto the nuts on the motherboard. Before you do so, however, be sure to remove the two fans on the MA610P ARGB. In addition, be sure to add some thermal paste on top of your processor before you mount the cooler in place.
The real difficulty came once I tried to place and mount the cooler to my motherboard. Unfortunately, the nuts that screw into the protruding standoffs from the back are directly in line with the screws to mount the cooler. As such, after you reach enough resistance, the screw to mount the cooler will stop turning, and instead the nut on top of the motherboard will start turning. Cooler Master did not think to add any sort of plastic washer between the nut and the standoff on their backplate, which could result in damage to your motherboard. I only noticed this when I started to see some adhesive tape squeeze out, which was actually the adhesive on the bottom of the nuts. I first thought this was actually part of the motherboard, so I immediately stopped twisting. At the end of the day, this did not end up damaging my motherboard, but it does not exactly spark confidence either. No one should have to even worry about this, especially when we contrast this to how easy it was to install the MA624 Stealth. You should take great caution that you do not over-torque the screw or the nut during installation. After this, I installed the fans back onto the heatsink for my testing.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware; Installation
3. Test Results
4. Conclusion
