Cooler Master Nepton 120XL, factory pre-filled, sealed and pressure tested, equipped with dual air pressure optimized Silencio FP 120 PWM fans. This small AIO cooler came to our test lab to show what it’s capable of. As we all know the Cooler Master is quite experienced when it comes to liquid cooling. As this the Nepton Series is not the first one on the market from Cooler Master. In fact it’s an update from the known Cooler Master’s Seidon 120V. Let’s have a quick look at the package and what’s hidden inside.
Stylish package showing the cooler itself, main features, as well as 5 years warranty. More important for most users is, although, the back side where we found dimensions of cooler and radiator as well as socket compatibility list.
The cooler is protected with formed carton shell. During unboxing we’ve found mounting brackets for Intel as well as AMD socket, back-plate with proper mounting screws, fan splitter cord and the thermal paste.
Cold plate or so called base plate is made of copper to achieve the best possible heat dissipation. The contact surface is as big as possible, providing little bit bigger contact area should you wish to use it in combination with 2011 CPUs. The surface itself is not mirror polished as we may see by other competition products but, what’s more important, it is very plain.
Cooler Master decided to inject the coolant in the middle of the copper micro fins, so the coolant splits to each side. Also the skived contact area is larger than by competitions products.
Before you start with the mounting procedure, we recommend to check the instructions in very nice made manual first. Although, back-plate preparation may look little bit difficult, but for a good reason. After you properly fixed the screws with plastic caps, your further mounting of the back-plate to mainboard will be easier. Actually well done Cooler Master!
The tubing is due to its design quite resistant against kink. User is able to rotate the tubing to each side directly on water block. Thus, you can better position the tubing inside the case. After powering the system the LED illuminates Cooler Master logo.
The Silencio FP120 fans are extra packed with rubber frame to prevent further vibration transfer over to the rest of the case. The fans provide higher air pressure while remaining relatively quiet in lower RPM.
Build quality of radiator is at good level. Height with both fans mounted is approx. 90mm. Radiator density is at 13FPI (fins per inch) which is almost as standard by this radiator thickness.
Cooler Master Nepton 120XL Specifications
| Model | RL-N12X-24PK-R1 / RL-N12X-24PK-R2 |
| CPU Socket | Intel LGA 2011-3 / 2011 / 1366 / 1156 / 1155 / 1151 / 1150 / 775 AMD Socket FM2 / FM2+ / FM1 / AM3+ / AM3 / AM2+ |
| Waterblock Dimensions | 75 x 69.7 x 49.1 mm (3 x 2.7 x 1.9 inch) |
| Radiator Dimensions | 150 x 119 x 38 mm (5.9 x 4.7 x 1.5 in) |
| Radiator Material | Aluminum |
| Tube Length | 358 ± 5mm |
| Tube Diameter | ø8 |
| Fan Dimensions | 120 x 120 x 25 mm (4.9 x 4.9 x 1 inch) |
| Fan Speed | 800~2400 RPM (PWM) ± 10% |
| Fan Air Flow | 16.5 – 76 CFM (28 – 128 m3/h) ± 10% |
| Fan Air Pressure | 0.48~4.8 mmH2O |
| Fan Life Expectancy | 160,000 hours |
| Fan Noise Level | 6.5~27 dBA |
| Fan Bearing Type | Loop Dynamic Bearing (LDB) |
| Fan Connector | 4-Pin |
| Fan Rated Voltage | 12 VDC |
| Pump Life Expectancy | 70,000 hours |
| Pump Noise Level | < 15 dBA |
| Pump Rated Voltage | 12VDC |
| Pump Power Consumption | 4.8W |
Test methodology:
To ensure that the results from one review to another are comparable, the Testing Methodology will be the same throughout all reviews, otherwise we will make a note if somethings changed and keep it separately from other results.
All testing was done on test Bench-table with a room ambient temperature of 22- 23°C and if temperature changes we will add delta T °C to the results.
Warm Up:
Before testing we run 10 minutes of Prime95 followed by 30 minutes of idling. This warm up period was done at stock CPU core frequency. For noise testing we are using fanless PSU. We mostly do fan noise test over night so we have our room as silent as possible.
We take noise values from distance of 30cm.
Testing System :
Software: OCCT 4.4.1, Easy Tune
For testing we used OCCT software and between each test we leave the PC at least 15 minutes to rest so that the temperature went back to the IDLE state. Followed by overclocking with help of Easy Tune Software (for Gigabyte mainboard) or for ASUS mainboard (BIOS CPU Ratio only). Each test lasted for 15 minutes. If the temperature of any CPU core exceeded 85°C the test was automatically turned off and the value of the results we have marked as “failed”. The resulting temperature in the tables are the average temperature of all cores. The results of the tests are influenced by many factors such as: the amount of thermal paste, pressure between the processor and CPU block, humidity, thermal conductivity of thermal paste, etc.. Therefore this results should be considered as indicative only.
For this test we use it’s own thermal paste provided by manufacturer.
Test results:
System Noise results from distance of 30cm away from the fan/radiator.
| Fan max. RPM | noise dB(A) | |
|---|---|---|
| 7V | 1400 | 41dB(A) |
| 12V | 2450 | 51dB(A) |
| IDLE PWM mode | 800 | 34.3dB(A) |
| @4.4GHz PWM mode | 1650 | 42.5dB(A) |
| @4.7GHz PWM mode | 2450 | 51dB(A) |
Conclusion:
Cooler Master Nepton 120 XL has delivered a bit less cooling performance as we have expected. The build quality is still at decent level, we have nothing to complain here so far. Keep in mind that we are testing this cooler with overclocked CPU which pushes the fans to spin at highest RPM producing bit of noise as expected. With that said, during average gaming sessions with headset on, as most users do anyway, you should not be very annoyed by fan or pump noise. When it comes to price ca. €90, we are little surprised as we have seen couple AIO coolers from competition that are bit on better side here. But, thinking of 5 years warranty is one of the arguments that can go hand in hand with higher price as well as shows the confidence from Cooler Master and proves that they stay behind their products.
Special Thanks to Intel and Jeni Kommunikation for supporting us with Intel products for testing.
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