Cooler Master V10 CPU Cooler Review

Heatsink Construction & Design Con't.

All in all the V10 consists of a very good design but we are sure your asking yourself one very obvious question by now: if the V10 has a TEC why did the Cooler Master engineers not stick it directly on the heatsink? The answer to this question is relatively simple. If they had just stuck a TEC on the base and had all “ten” heatpipes cool the TEC this cooler would be no where near as good nor efficient as it is. As its stands the TEC used is “only” a 70 watt Peltier unit. This may sound like a lot but TECs are not 100% efficient and a 70W TDP CPU is on the cool end of the spectrum, so imagine how much juice this bad boy would need to cool an overclocked i7? The other main reason for having it off to the side is this reduces the risk of sweating (or at least condensation which can result in CPU shorts). These two problems are the main down sides to just using TEC cooling which is why this is a Hybrid cooling solution.

The easiest way to understand what Cooler Master has done with the V10 is to imagine a high performance gas engine. During normal operations it’s fairly efficient but to really make the car fly a NOS injection system is needed. The addition of Nitrous Oxide super cools the gasoline and allows it to be even more effective in converting its potential energy into useable energy . In the case of the V10, the 70watt TEC is the NOS and the liquid in the heatpipes (the real cooler in this and most good Air based coolers) is what makes the engine work. However, just like nitrous the TEC only kicks in when it is really needed.


As we are sure you know, a heatpipe is nothing more than a thin walled copper tube filled with a liquid (for our purposes lets ignore wicks inside the tube). This liquid has a very low boiling point, as heat from the CPU is absorbed by the thin copper tubes, these tubes then superheat the liquid. The liquid turns into a gas and flows away from the heat source, the rest of the copper tube not directly under the CPU has cooling fins attached which (relatively speaking) slowly absorb the heat from the gas allowing it to phase change once again back to a liquid. At this point the liquid flows back down to the hot part of the tube where it picks up more energy and starts the cycle all over again.

The problem with this is the longer the tube, the more efficient it gets at converting gas to liquid BUT the longer it takes for the liquid to flow back to the heat source. It really is a double edge sword in that if the tube is too short it can only absorb so much heat (thus relegating the cooler to the lower TDP only CPUs) but the shorter the tube the faster the turn around time is on the cycle. Complicating things further is the fact air is a inefficient medium at best and you can only make the cooling fins so large thus limiting the amount of heat the heatpipes can dissipate. Of course if they make the pipes too long the unit becomes inefficient. All in all a nasty Catch-22.


Cooler Master has taken this problem and for all intents and purposes made four of the heatpipes extremely short on one end and placed a TEC over these heatpipes. On top of the contact base is a sensor and controller for the TEC. When temperatures are low this unit will act like any large heatpipe-only cooler and will not have the TEC active.

Thus, we expect it to still act like a very GOOD air based cooling solution but the real magic only happens when the heat is turned up! When the sensor tells the controller there is a high demand for cooling, that controller opens up the metaphorical valve and unleashes the NOS! The TEC gets fed electricity and it goes to work cooling the ends of the attached heatpipes, and their short travel distance no longer becomes a detriment. This allows them to suck up massive amounts of heat in a phase change cycle so short it is simply amazing. The other heatpipes are still going to work about as well as they did before but now you have for all intents and purposes a second cooler working to keep the CPU happy.

Unfortunately, this setup looks and feels like a kludge, which is more than likely going to be a very imprecise way of controlling the TEC. We may be wrong -and we hope we are- but unless Cooler Master has really tweaked this design we have a bad feeling this unit’s TEC will not even be involved for anything but insane heat levels. Only time and testing will tell, so for now we are going to give the V10 a pass and move on.


The only disappointing aspect of this unit was the base. The polish of the base is certainly first rate, but there is a slight peak in the center which is easily seen with our razor blade test or even by the way it bends light in the above photo. This really was a little disappointing to say the least. However, the peak is miniscule and while it may negatively impact performance of this unit, we have a hunch there is plenty of performance to spare. If you need to drain every last drop of efficiency from this unit you can easily do what CM should have done and properly lap the base until it is both ultra smooth and perfectly flat.