Cooler Master MasterLiquid Maker 92

[crazyeyesreaper]

Cooler Master looks to redefine all-in-one liquid coolers with the MasterLiquid Maker 92. Offering a completely unique design that has more in common with a traditional tower cooler than a liquid cooler, it manages to stand out in a crowded market. However, the question is whether it can keep your CPU cool?

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[dj-electric]

A bit sugar-coated IMHO. This cooler is, for a lack of better words, an experiment.

A 99$ cooler that can be beaten in pretty much every category by 20-30$ ones is not worthy of existing outside of media.

 

[Chaitanya]

Its an interesting experiment nonetheless, I am waiting for CMs expandable AIO shown off in Jan.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

With two ways to rotate the radiator, I would think that in the tower config (assuming space enough), directing the fans to blow towards the top or rear of the case would keep the interior cooler than if the radiator was in the low flat config. The flat config, appears that it would keep more heat in the case and slow the would-be normal air flow paths. That config might need a bit more engineering and a couple extra case fans to increase air flow to keep the internals cool enough.

 

[Sasqui]

Wow, I was rather excited to read the review... then I read the results How they went from prototype to production with such abysmal performance is an absolute mystery. I think it speaks to how ineffective marketing can be.

In any case, thanks for the review @crazyeyesreaper

 

[RejZoR]

While they focus a lot on noise which explains poor thermal performance, I don't see much point in this. It's still tower cooler dimensions. The whole point of AiO in my miniATX build was the ability to offset the massive radiator to a place where you have enough space to accommodate it. Something you can't do with a heatpipe tower cooler and low profile ones have crap thermal performance.

I now have midiATX and the same radiator offset still applies. I can have radiator on the intake, sucking far cooler air than it would otherwise. With this "concept" cooler, you don't actually solve anything really. Only thing better is that these loops seem to circulate heat through fins faster than heatpipes can. And that's about it when it comes to good points about it.

 

[KainXS]

It was a really ambitious attempt to do something different.

Shame it did not work but I think most expected this outcome when they revealed it a while back.

Really though, how in the world did something that performed so poor get an 8.0 though.

 

[pat-roner]

I really feel that a 8 was very generous. Beaten by almost every single cooler and terrible price/performance.

Cryorig c7 which has excellent price/performance and is an overall good cooler only got a 8.6..

 

[HammerON]

Interesting review. Was hoping that it would cool better.

 

[zmeul]

even the Hyper 212 EVO, that's 1/2 a decade old, stayed in the game

 

[Sasqui]

At the end of the day the cooler handles stock loads just fine. In all honesty i suspect some of the issue is that its not pulling heat away from the CPU quick enough. Which is an issue thats related to the TIM under the IHS. I wish i had an x79 / x99 platform to see how it performs in that regard. I have a feeling it would do a bit a better.

Aren't all coolers tested with the exact same platform?

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Alright hold tight ladies and gents, I noticed an issue with the mounting hardware. Two of the nuts are not grabbing the screws as tight as they should giving incorrect pressure. Going to see if I can resolve the issue and and then retest.

Essentially the thumb screws bottom out sooner than they should and this is why having more than one day with a product is important.

 

[ZeppMan217]

Alright hold tight ladies and gents, I noticed an issue with the mounting hardware. Two of the nuts are not grabbing the screws as tight as they should giving incorrect pressure. Going to see if I can resolve the issue and and then retest.

Essentially the thumb screws bottom out sooner than they should and this is why having more than one day with a product is important.

So...a complete redo?

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

I can already tell you performance is markedly improved. No more throttle during OC test.

These are the problem the two nuts you see there would snug up and stop acting like they had been fully tightened. Performance is massively different. Should have result in about 20 mins

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Review has now been updated

 

[KainXS]

so the difference is about 10-20C after re-benching on load, that does make it look more appealing for if you have a smaller form factor case, the price is still a little steep though.

 

[Keullo-e]

Cut the price to half, and we have a great price/performance cooler for smaller cases. I don't think that this will be a great hit with a price tag like which it has now.

 

[Sasqui]

Review has now been updated

You work fast

Not stellar results, but certainly better than before!

 

[Assimilator]

I only have one question for Coolermaster regarding this product:

Why does it exist?

 

[Joss]

Speaking after the revised figures I find this product very appealing.
Yes, objectively it's too expensive; but I could see myself buying/using it just for the originality of it.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

@crazyeyesreaper are the screws still an issue in the upright/tower position or just on the lower/flat config?

btw which two nuts? I dont see which ones you're refering to in the pic.

 

[buggalugs]

Hey Crazy, Did you test the cooler vertically or horizontally??....did you test the difference to temps depending on direction? I cant see any info on this in the review, but maybe I missed it??

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Temps on CPU do not change based on orientation, performs the same both ways. Chipset was a few degrees cooler with fans blowing down but nothing that makes a huge difference.

@crazyeyesreaper are the screws still an issue in the upright/tower position or just on the lower/flat config?

btw which two nuts? I dont see which ones you're refering to in the pic.

The two nuts that hold the cooler in place. Basically they tighten down and it feels like they bottom out aka that they are fully in place. However it seems the threads on the nuts were not 100% or had something in them eitherway via by hand or with screw driver didnt have enough elbow grease to tighten them all the way as it felt like they bottomed out. I mounted and remounted a couple times same thing. It wasn't until i got down and really looked I could see that the mounting arms on the CPU block were not fully touching the top of the screws aka there were threads visible. Using a pair of pliers after a quarter turn they broke free and i could then hand tighten them the rest of the way. Once fully tightened performance improved drastically. Most likely this is just a one off bad luck and due to time crunch trying to get everything ready to go i didn't notice. its also not the location either it was the nuts themselves. That location there just makes it more difficult as the tubing is pretty much right in the way making it more difficult to notice.

 

[RejZoR]

Now that's a different story after rebench. 77°C at 4.6GHz Prime is a very good result if you're silence focused. I let mine go up to 80°C for my 4.5 GHz 5820K because I focus on silence so much. Same is here. If they'd spin the fan as high as some other products, it would perform even better. But it would be also a lot noisier. But currently, it beats most coolers in noise department while not being bad at temperatures at all.

 

[D1RTYD1Z619]

Cut the price to half, and we have a great price/performance cooler for smaller cases. I don't think that this will be a great hit with a price tag like which it has now.

I agree it should be like 50 to 60 bucks for that thing.