Cooler Master NEPTON 120XL Review: One and Done

Test System and Benchmark Results of the Cooler Master Nepton 120XL

• Ambient temperature monitored at case intake and temperature Delta was used.
• All case and heat sink fans were benchmarked with fan control settings disabled and running at 100% unless otherwise specified.
• Temperatures are averaged (last minute) from individual core temperature results monitored by AIDA64 after 15 minutes.
• FPU load average is used to simulate worst case scenario load levels similar to Intel Burn Test or OCCT, results marked “0″ means thermal limit was reached and the CPU was throttled and thus the results were discarded.
• Stock settings have all power saving features enabled in the motherboard with Vcore set static to 1.264V and set to “Balanced” in the OS. Multiplier at 16 at stock speed of 3.2GHz.
• Overclocked settings have Vcore voltage automatically set to 1.264V with adjusted multiplier set at 20 to gain overclock at 4.0GHz.
• All tests were taken at least three times to get the final result.
• TDJ 834 was used for noise level measurement in dBA, 20CM away from the center fan exhaust.

Benchmarks:

Performance Summary:

Nepton 120XL performed slightly better than Enermax Liqmax 120S. Temperatures I have gotten on stock and over clock CPU speeds were very low and stable. Fan noise was measured from the exhaust of the case and overall was relatively low considering the fans were running at 100% under all benchmarks. FPU benchmarks ran a little bit hotter but still with in the expected temperatures. From what I saw, Nepton 120XL performed very well in my test rig under stock and over clocked settings.