Performance
Test setup and Testing Methodology
The system used for testing is listed in the table below. Ambient temperatures were kept at 24 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. The thermal paste used was Noctua’s NT-H2 (for testing consistency). The fan speed was set to Full. The idle temperatures were recorded after 10 minutes of idle and max temperatures were recorded after a 5-minute torture test using Aida 64 CPU System Stability Test and recording the Cores values and taking the average.
When new processors arrive benchmark tables always have to start over. So, this limited sample size shows up in the chart.
| CPU | Intel Core i9-11900K (Comet Lake) |
| Cooling | CPU Cooler |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z590 Vision G |
| Ram | Zadak Spark RGB 16GB DDR4-4133 CL19 |
| HDD | Samsung 960 EVO 250GB PCIE M.2 SSD |
| PSU | Antec Signature Series 1000W |
| OS | Windows 10 |
Alright LOAD temps! The ones that really matter. The Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL240 FLUX faired pretty well coming in at 49 degrees Celsius and an astonishing 82 during the Aida64 FPU Test. Only time will tell where this cooler will rank in future tests, but I am pretty confident it will compete with the best of them. Now we get to the good stuff the results. As you can see in the graph below, we have the Idle temps for the PL240 FLUX. This chip hovers at a cool 28-29 degrees Celsius. Almost ambient temps!
Noise can be an important factor for some. If we have an open case design and the fans might be exposed, we do not want record setting noise coming from our cooler. This not the case with the Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL240 FLUX. As you can see in the graph above the fans at full speed hit 31 dBs with dual fans. Just to note, the actually hearable noise from the fans are not distracting at all.
Now let’s move on to the Conclusion and Verdict!
