Introduction

You never get a second chance at a first impression. It’s been said over and over, it’s obvious, and it’s true. But, there are many times that an initial impression is far off base, and that can lead to many seemingly contradictory impressions almost immediately.

With the glut of Direct Contact Heat Pipe tower CPU coolers on the market, there seem to be two schools of design. A very generic looking unit that is almost impossible to distinguish from a hundred others, or a design using the word ‘innovative’ to mask the real intention of attempting to be eye candy that may or may not effectively cool your CPU. But, let’s suppose (just for the sake of argument, of course) that your main concern was cooling your CPU well at a reasonable price, with or without flashing blue LEDs.

The Cooler Master Hyper TX3 is an aftermarket tower cooler that may be in line with what you are looking for. The Hyper TX3 comes equipped with one 92mm fan capable of a wide RPM range, but is set up to take a second fan if you would like to take it to a push/pull configuration, and all the hardware is provided to do it. It is compatible with most of the latest sockets including Core i3 and i5 and AM3.  I will be mounting this with bottom to top airflow and benchmarking along with two other tower coolers mounted in the same manner.