Cooler Master V10

Cooler Master send us this heatsink last minute, the huge V10, which sports two 120mm fans and a 70W TEC for extreme performance. Oh, and it weighs 1.2kg, making it the heaviest CPU heatsink tested to date!

Cooler Master was founded with the mission of providing the industry’s best thermal solutions. Since its establishment a decade ago, the company has remained faithful to this mission, emerging as a world leader in products and services for companies dealing with devices where heat issues must be resolved.
In pursuing this mission, Cooler Master is absolutely committed to delivering solutions that precisely meet customer requirements for features, performance, and quality. Moreover, we strive to be a reliable long-term partner for our customers that they can truly depend on. It aims to be the first and foremost name that comes to mind for companies around the world seeking thermal solutions, and seeks to build such a reputation through outstanding technology, sophisticated design, and superior service.
Cooler Master’s current business encompasses a comprehensive lineup of thermal solutions for a full range of applications. Its products range from heat sinks and fans to component housing, chassis, and ducting for computers, industrial machinery, telecommunications equipment, and many other devices.

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Cooler Master V10

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Cooler Master V10
- Intel S775/S1366 / AMD AM2/939
- Heatsink : 1270 gram
- 2x120mm PWM fan rated at 800~2400rpm
- ~$120

Cooler Master came up with quite an elaborate design for the V10 heatsink, it’s a cooling monster weighing in close to 1.3kg when placed on a balance, it’s made up of 10 heat pipes which carry the heat from the copper base (very nicely machine lapped) to 3 separate aluminum cooling towers; to further increase the performance they have integrated a 70W TEC (peltier) with the cool side cooling down the heat pipes going to the base, while another set on the hot side takes care of removing that heat.

Mounting 1.3kg of metal on your CPU will not be done with push-pins, so Cooler Master included their tried and tested “mounted from the rear of the motherboard” gear inside the package, you’ll also get a detailed manual and sample of Cooler Master’s new “ThermalFusion 400” thermal paste.

To illustrate the cooling action on the V10 we made this small illustration in Paint:


(red=heat, blue=cooling path)

No matter from what side you look at the V10, it’s a beast of a cooler.



Thinking we had seen it all with the Scythe Orochi we have here the V10 which claims the title as heaviest HSF at 1270 gram ( vs 1250 gram for the Orochi). The V10 covers 30-40% of the motherboard, but concentrates airflow over two areas, there’s one 120mm fan which expels air towards the rear, while the second one blows air onto the ram slots. There’s enough room for larger DDR2/DDR3 enthusiast modules, but more exotic ram sticks might run into compatibility issues.

The 120mm fans run at 2300rpm @ 12v and 1078rpm @ 5v. The TEC comes into action when the temp probe measures between 20~70°C (to prevent condensation); the higher the CPU temp the more power the TEC will draw. At high fan speed we measured a 30~40W power draw, while at low fan speed the TEC had to work harder, drawing the maximum rated 70W.

Getting the motherboard back into the case with the V10 installed was quite a challenge as this unit takes up a lot of space, in the end we succeeded, with a few millimeter to spare left and right.



What do we compare a $120 air cooled heatsink with? The Thermalright IFX-14 for starters, although that one only costs ~$70. Then there are also the CoolIT units, Freezone ($220) and Eliminator ($150) which are all-in-one cooling solutions at $100+ too. We’ll also throw in the Ultra-120 Extreme for good measure. This chart will be a bit bigger than the previous ones, but that goes hand in hand with the size of the V10 :)



Good news first, it beats the more expensive CoolIT Eliminator in both noise and performance easily. With the two 120mm fans running at 5v the TEC takes care of the cooling and performance/noise ratio is quite good, almost matching the TRUE and IFX-14. In the end though the V10 main issue is its price, it shouldn’t cost twice as much to match performance of compact tower cooler like the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme. While the V10 has cooling power in abundance, the TEC drives up the price, while it may not be entirely needed, unplugging the TEC in our tests increased temperatures only by 1-2°C. Overall we commend Cooler Master for an original retail product and new approach to CPU air cooling, but if a water cooled unit like the Freezone with 56W TEC is unable to beat a tower cooler, what chances does an air cooled TEC construction have?

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In summary here are the strong/weak points of the Cooler Master V10:



+ Good performance
+ Solid Installation
+ Better performance/noise than more expensive water-cooled products

- Ridiculously high price
- Unable to beat much cheaper Air Coolers