Cooler Master is one of the biggest names in the PC component market, and they’ve already won many awards for their coolers over the years, from the virtually legendary 212 air cooler to their more recent Masterliquid series. Today we kick things off with a look at their newly revised Masterliquid 240, and AIO liquid cooler with a, you guessed it, 240mm radiator. The new design features a revised pump design, improved tubing and a few other minor ergonomic and visual tweaks. Show
As you can see from the specifications, it comes with support for every major socket spanning many years of motherboard releases. Not only will it fit the now ancient 775, it’ll also support 2011-v3, as well as the new AMD Ryzen chips on the AM4 platform. It comes equipped with a pair of 120mm which operate between 650 and 2000 RPM. Cooler Master Masterliquid 240 AIO CPU Cooler Packaging and Accessories The box is nice and large, providing plenty of protection for the hardware. On the front, you can also see it supports LGA 1151 and AM4. There is quite a lot of hardware included in the box with this cooler, mostly due to the fairly extensive socket support. You’ll find a universal backplate, AMD and Intel mounting arms, all the usual nuts and bolts, a Y-splitter for the fans, and two 120mm fans. The fans are very nice quality and are Cooler Master’s own MasterFan 120 AB series, which are tuned for high airflow and low noise. They also feature thick rubber grommets on both sides of each screw fitting to help reduce unwanted vibrations. Support eTeknix.comBy supporting eTeknix, you help us grow and continue to bring you the latest news, reviews, and competitions. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to keep up with the latest technology news, reviews and more. Share your favourite articles, chat with the team and more. Also check out eTeknix YouTube, where you'll find our latest video reviews, event coverage and features in 4K! Looking for more exciting features on the latest technology? Check out our What We Know So Far section or our Fun Reads for some interesting original features. Cooler Master’s MasterLiquid ML240L V2 RGB is an update to the existing 240 mm ML240L liquid CPU cooler that, along with its 120 mm counterpart the ML120L V2, offer design changes intended to increase performance and longevity. Cooler master lists these improvements to the new V2 versions of the ML240L and ML120L: New Generation Dual Chamber Pump Enlarged Surface Area on Radiator New SickleFlow 120 RGB Reinforced Sealing for Anti-Leaking Prevention In today’s review Kent explores this new cooler, struggles with an RGB aversion I just invented to add drama to the review, and takes us down the insidious path to liquid cooling. I for one am curious to see the changes Cooler Master has made with this, having reviewed a 240mm MasterLiquid model myself in the past. Enjoy! – The Editor Product Specifications
Manufacturer Description
Hear the tale of the dark path of the AIO Long ago, liquid cooling your PC was difficult, risky, and something only the hardest core (you mean [H]ardest|Core – Ed.), half-mad, PC enthusiasts dared even think of attempting. Then manufacturers started releasing self-contained closed loop, or all in one (AIO) coolers. Early on, most of these products were based on either the Asetek or Cool-It designs. Due to patents, almost everything in the AIO market is still an Asetek design. Many of those hard-core liquid cooling enthusiasts turned up their noses at these simple solutions to liquid cooling. Personally, my first experience with liquid cooling was a 120mm AIO in an attempt to tame my AMD Phenom II 955 quad core. Air coolers were not yet as capable as the titanic Noctuas and Be Quiets that rule the world today, so that little 120mm AIO cooler did an admirable job. It was such an admirable job that I was drawn towards that dark path of madness. The path was a slippery slope that ended in hard line tubing, $120 waterblocks, and $15 fittings. As one who has fallen into the madness, I must give warning to be wary of the siren’s call of the radiator and pump, and the cooling that they bring. Which brings us to today’s review of the new Cooler Master Master Liquid ML240L V2 RGB (manufacturers believe that long product names will help to stave off the madness). Unlike that first, single fan, 120mm AIO I tried so many years ago, this is a 240mm radiator with two 120mm, static pressure optimized RGB fans, and a pretty fancy, third generation dual chamber water pump. Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01019Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01021Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01023Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01010The pump has several new features aimed at decreasing pump noise, but probably most important among those is a new impeller design. The new radiator itself has a very attractive, textured finish, which gives it a high quality feeling and appearance. The inlet and outlet tubing is thick, flexible, and has a very nice braided covering. The tubing does seem to be a little on the shorter side, so if you have a larger case, you might be limited to mounting the radiator in the top as I did. (The tubing was too short to mount the radiator as an intake in the floor of my test system, which would have been my preferred location.) Cooler Master also extended the radiator fins, which they claim increases surface area over the original ML240L by 25%. Cooler Master ML240L V2 Pump Design 1Cooler Master ML240L V2 Pump Design 2More surface area means more heat dissipation, but with more fin area, more static pressure from the fans is needed, which is why this new cooler comes with a pair of new and improved Cooler Master Sickleflow 120mm fans. The seven-blade profile and square frame make it obvious that this fan was designed to go on a radiator. On top of all of these improvements, the new Master Liquid ML240L RGB is offering all this for the MSRP of $79.99 USD. Many competing products can be found over $100 US, so, if it performs, the new Cooler Master AIO could be a steal. Installation NotesMounting the ML240L V2 was very straightforward, and mostly easy. Honestly, I love the knurled fan screws that allow hand tightening without the need to creatively fit a screwdriver into tight confinements, as is so often the case with mounting radiators and fans. Using the provided screws also means you will not need to worry about damaging the radiator core, as there is no shielding to prevent screw damage on the radiator. Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-00999Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01012Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01028Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01042Mounting the pump assembly on Intel was as painless as can be, and one of the best systems I’ve encountered on an all in one. I cannot say the same for mounting to an AMD system. I understand the choice to utilize the stock AMD plastic bracket as this allows for AMD compatibility going back at least 10 years. Unfortunately, mounting the pump in this way can be a bit difficult and the pump just never seems as secure as it would if it used four mounting points instead of two. One thing that I’ve always loved about liquid cooling is how clean and free of obstruction it keeps your motherboard. The ML240L is no exception here. Once it is mounted, you still have unfettered access to almost the entirety of your motherboard. As someone who likes to tinker, I can’t express how nice it is to be able to access motherboard headers and plugs that you simply can’t get to with a large tower cooler. Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01029Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01032Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01043Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01044RGB Lighting As I have mentioned in previous reviews, I am definitely not an RGB hater. I use plenty of RGB in my personal system. I am, however becoming a hater of how complicated and messy adding RGB to a system has become. Cooler Master does include a nice little controller unit which the pump and fans can be connected to easily enough. The controller can shift color, effect, and brightness, but the effects are limited as the RGB implementation here is not addressable, and only one color can be displayed at a time. Cooler Master also includes three nicely designed plastic clips that keep the 4-pin RGB connections from pulling apart accidentally. Aside from the additional wiring, and cable management, which is just part of RGB, I’ve got one major gripe with Cooler Master’s choices: a 4-pin Molex connector. Seriously, SATA power has been a thing for a while now. Why would any manufacturer still use Molex in 2020? (Because vintage computers – and their connections – are awesome. – Ed.) Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01018Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01055Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01057Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01059Cooler Master does include a nice little controller unit which the pump and fans can be connected to easily enough. The controller can shift color, effect, and brightness, but the effects are limited as the RGB implementation here is not addressable, and only one color can be displayed at a time. Cooler Master also includes three nicely designed plastic clips that keep the 4-pin RGB connections from pulling apart accidentally. Aside from the additional wiring, and cable management, which is just part of RGB, I’ve got one major gripe with Cooler Master’s choices: a 4-pin Molex connector. Seriously, SATA power has been a thing for a while now. Why would any manufacturer still use Molex in 2020? (Because vintage computers – and their connections – are awesome. – Ed.) Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01060Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01063Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01065Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB-01066Cooler PerformanceOnce past mounting the cooler, and getting the cables for the RGB managed, it was time to see if the ML240L V2 actually performed well in its primary purpose. Thermals For testing, I ran the OCCT small FFT stress test for 20 minutes on an open test bed. Cooler Test Platform Processor AMD Ryzen 7 3600X (4.3 GHz all cores @ 1.4 volts) Motherboard MSI B350M Mortar Arctic Memory 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 GPU EVGA GeForce GTX 980 SSC Storage WD Black Edition 256 GB NVMe SSD IC Diamond Graphite Thermal Pad used on all coolers for consistency in testing. All tests conducted at room temperature of 23 C. Happily, I can report that it performs very well. During a twenty minute test under load, CPU temps were within margin of error of the best performing cooler I have personally tested (Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3). Noise Levels The new dual chamber pump is extremely quiet, spinning along at a full speed of 2500 RPM, and never emitting more than 30 dB. I cannot praise the new Sickleflow fans quite as highly as the new pump. At their limit of 1850 RPM they generated only generated 44.5 dB, which is not bad, but at idle the rifle bearing design emitted an audible humming. At the 800 RPM idle, the ML240L produced 32.3 dB, which is the loudest of any cooler I’ve tested to this point. It is not just the volume, but it is the tone of the noise that the fans produce that I find problematic. ConclusionThe new ML240L V2 RGB punches above its price when it comes to raw performance. At $79.99 USD, it really is a bargain, and competes with more expensive liquid and air coolers. It’s just not pleasant on the ears. There are much quieter, higher speed, fans on the market that would make this a world class cooler if substituted for the Sickleflows, but that would have also made the price quite a bit higher. Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L V2 RGB: $79.99, Amazon If you’re looking for a 240mm AIO, and don’t mind the sound of rifle bearing fans, then the Cooler Master Master Liquid ML240L V2 RGB is a good performer at a very good price. Just beware that path to liquid cooling madness that so many before you have followed. Review DisclosuresThis disclosure statement covers the way the product being reviewed was obtained and the relationship between the product's manufacturer and PC Perspective. How Product Was ObtainedThe cooler is on loan from Cooler Master for the purpose of this review. What Happens To Product After ReviewThe cooler remains the property of Cooler Master but will be on extended loan to PC Perspective for the purpose of future testing and product comparisons. Company InvolvementCooler Master provided the product sample and technical brief to PC Perspective but had no control over the content of the review and was not consulted prior to publication. PC Perspective CompensationNeither PC Perspective nor any of its staff were paid or compensated in any way by Cooler Master for this review. Advertising DisclosureCooler Master has not purchased advertising at PC Perspective during the past twelve months. Affiliate LinksThis article contains affiliate links to online retailers. PC Perspective may receive compensation for purchases made through those links. Is Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L good?Final Verdict: In conclusion, the CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML240L RGB V2 stands as a powerful and efficient AIO CPU liquid cooler. Its implementation of SickleFlow fans ensures excellent cooling performance, while the customizable RGB lighting adds a dash of personality to any PC setup. Is ml240 illusion good?I recommend the "Illusion" style of the CM Coolers it is their latest one and the quality is fantastic. Very very nice! A great look, and installed easily. Exactly what was described in the description. How fast is the Cooler Master 240l pump?The new dual chamber pump is extremely quiet, spinning along at a full speed of 2500 RPM, and never emitting more than 30 dB. Does Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L come with thermal paste?A: Yes it does come with thermal paste. |
