Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler Review

Conclusion

After reviewing two of Cooler Master's higher-end heatsinks, one thing is for certain: they are definitely not adverse to taking a risk or two. Sometimes risks pay off (the backplate cut-out in their cases come to mind) and at times they can even help propel your company forward; unfortunately they don’t always work as they are meant to. In the case of the V8 it’s a little bit of both these situations as the idea of the V8 a sound one and under certain conditions it is a very good product. However, the problem with the V8 is not the risk Cooler Master took in designing and bringing said design to market, the problem is the V8 is trying too hard to be too many things to too many market groups. It is almost as if this cooler has a major identity crisis.

We are sure that if the V8 had been paired with a very, very powerful fan we would be singing a very different tune and the overclocking enthusiast market would love it as a cheaper alternative to the V10. Unfortunately at that point, the portion of the enthusiast crowd that craves silence would universally hate it. However, that would also be where the included fan speed controller would come perfectly into play.

The fan selection factor is a big reason this cooler is a less than optimal choice for both silent PC and enthusiast crowd, but it is not the only one. The biggest problem we have with this cooler is the decision to make the lone fan next to impossible to replace. Indeed, we could overlook a lot of the issues with the V8 if only we had been able to mount a secondary and tertiary fan to its outside cooling assemblies. If Cooler Master had thought the idea of the current fin design through to its logical conclusion they would have foreseen the static pressure issue it has caused. They could have then designed the exterior fin arrays to be as large as the interior ones AND had included a mechanism for mounting fans to these arrays. This seemingly small oversight has literally doomed this cooler to a “jack of all trades, master of none” niche market. If the V8 had been able to mount more fans, the potentiometer for the middle fan would make perfect sense as it would be a nod to the silent PC crowd who would not be doing major overclocking (and thus never mount more than one fan to it) and allow them to tune the decent harmonics of this fan to their liking. All we want is some options, is that too much to ask for?

As it stands the V8 is a very high quality piece of kit that will suit many last generation systems nicely. If you fall into this category and you understand the inherent limitations of this cooler you will end up with a very well built product that gives some decent temperatures. If you do not plan on overclocking your i7, but want something which is better and produces less noise you too will like this cooler. For everyone else, there are much better choices to be had for less monetary investment.


Pros
- high quality construction
- fairly quiet fan
- potentiometer included to tweak fan noise
- decent 775 cooler


Cons
- Price
- Lackluster i7 performance
- no ability to mount more fans
- included fan is underpowered
- swapping out the fan is next to impossible
- never lives up to its potential