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 Adia 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. Hopefully we will have a i9 11900K soon, that we will have as a permanent test bench. For now we temporarily use a 11600K that we got our hands on.
| CPU | Intel Core i5-11600K (Rocket Lake) |
| Cooling | MasterLiquid ML240 Illusion CPU Cooler |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master |
| Ram | Zadak Spark RGB DDR4-4133 32GB Kit |
| HDD | Samsung 960 EVO 250GB PCIE M.2 SSD |
| PSU | Antec Signature Series 1000W |
| OS | Windows 10 |
Now we get to the good stuff the results. As you can see in the graph below we have the Idle temps for the ML240 Illusion. This chip hovers at a cool 28 degrees Celsius. Almost ambient temps!
Alright LOAD temps! The ones that really matter. The ML240 Illusion faired pretty well coming in at 52 degrees Celsius. Only time will tell where this cooler will rank in future tests but I am pretty confidant it will compete with the best of them.
Noise can be a important factor for some. If we have a open case design and the fans might be exposed, we don not want record setting noise coming from our cooler. This not the case with the ML240 Illusion. As you can see in the graph above the fans at full speed hit 31 dBs with a dual fans. Just to note, the actually hearable noise from the fans are not distracting at all.
Now lets move on to the Conclusion and Verdict!
