Design

While the overall design of the CoolerMaster Hyper 48 KHC-L91 cooler resembles that of conventional coolers ?it does not employ any new shapes, like curved fins ?it is pretty clear that the company has used numerous design tricks to make the Hyper 48 KHC-L91 significantly more efficient than other “conservative?coolers.

The base of the cooler is made of pure copper in order to quickly absorb CPU heat. The heat-pipes are placed just above the base, quickly transferring heat to the upper side of the cooler that has more fins which are cooled-down by a low-speed fan from Delta, a well-known maker of fans and PSUs. It should be noted that the KHC-L91’s copper base itself is very impressive: it is about 8mm in height and has a good contact with fins, which should ensure that the heat transfer between different parts of the cooler is organized in the most efficient way ?using heat-pipes and copper fins. The construction itself is relatively simple and seemingly efficient, but only actual tests will reveal if it is better compared to rather exotic coolers from Zalman and Gigabyte.

CoolerMaster Hyper 48 KHC-L91 weighs 864 grams, which is a lot; nevertheless, retention brackets the manufacturer provides give the impression to be tough enough to hold this huge weight.

Retention Mechanism, Installation Procedure

CoolerMaster offers two types of retention mechanisms with its Hyper 48 KHC-L91 product: one for Socket 478 and Socket 754/939/940 platforms, another is for Socket 775 mainboards. Both types of brackets require you to install them along with the mainboard, thus, in case you are setting up the KHC-L91 into a computer that is already assembled, you’ll need to spend additional time uninstalling the mainboard from the chassis.

Unfortunately, CoolerMaster does not provide a really comprehensive handbook with its product ?the pictures in the manual are somewhat undersized and in case you are not an experienced computer enthusiast, you may find it a bit thorny to install the KHC-L91 cooler. Still, the process of setting up is not really tricky.

Still, the Hyper 48 KHC-L91 proved to be the easiest one to install on Socket T among participants of our roundup: it was really rapidly and effortlessly. CoolerMaster’s engineers definitely deserve a credit for the retention mechanism of the device.