The easiest way to think about the Cooler Master Hyper 622 Halo series is not to think of it as Cooler Master’s take on say the DeepRock AK620 or Thermalright P.A. 120 blueprint; nor is it the modernized version the Zalman ‘dual fan flower’ design of the late aughts. Instead, it is best to consider this an improved Cooler Master MasterAir MA620. Improved dual towers, improved installation and compatibility, improved performance, even better overall aesthetics. So much so a different company, one less committed to customer satisfaction, could have easily called this a MasterAir MA622; slapped a $100 price tag on it (aka the same MSRP as what the MA620 was when it launched back in 2020)… and no one would have batted an eye. Unlike certain unnamed companies Cooler Master did not go for a blatant money grab. Instead, and while Cooler Master obviously love money, they made it part of the Hyper lineup with a Hyper-class price tag. In other words, this is a welterweight boxer that lost juuuust enough weight to fight in the lightweight division… and dominate it.
This is the secret to understanding why the Hyper 622 Halo out and out destroys the bell curve for dual 120 mm cooling solutions. Let’s break on down what the Hyper 622 does differently than both other modern dualie 120s and the MA620. Where the MA620 makes use of eleven separate components to create its ‘top’ (and sides) fascia cover(ings) Cooler Master has instead opted for two simpler and smaller solid aluminum top caps for the Hyper 622 Halo. Basically, instead of having to produce multiple components, and then assemble said components, in order to grant their new Hyper cooler both RGB abilities and integrated mounting abilities… Cooler Master replaced them with two stamped aluminum caps and offloaded both the mounting hardware and RGB capabilities to other portions of the Hyper 622 design. This simplification of the production line is where a good chunk of the difference in asking price comes from… as two aluminum caps are noticeably cheaper to make and factory install vs eleven fiddly custom parts.
Make no mistake, cheaper and cheap are not the same thing. Compared to the similar priced AK620 and its faux carbon topers that cover the heat pipes the Hyper 622 is classier, more elegant, and looks like a more expensive cooling device. Compare to the Thermalright P.A. 120 SE toppers that don’t even cover the tops of the heat pipes… the Hyper 622 is simply in a different league. Compared to the much, much more expensive MA620 things are a bit more complicated. The MA620 offers a ‘clean’ look that the Hyper 622 can not match. It comes close, but one large topper is a more elegant looking solution. As befitting a frickin’ hundred dollar premium cooler. Personally speaking, ~35 USD in savings more than makes up for this minor to moderate difference, yet the extra twenty dollars compared to the “Peerless” Assassin is money well spent.
Moving on. The fin array is also radically different in the Hyper 622 versus the MA620. With the MA620 you get two sexy, ‘sculpted’ fin arrays that made the MasterAir MA620 one of the prettiest air coolers released in the last decade. Compare and contrast that with the slab sided, with obvious ‘faces’ cut into the two fin arrays of the Hyper 622… and the MA620 is still the prettiest cooler we have worked with in a long time. Of course, the MA620 can be prettier as that is a single fan only design. One where there is no easy way of mounting a second (let alone third) fan to those pretty fin arrays.
The Hyper 622 on the other hand can easily mount a secondary (pre-attached for you at the factory) and even a tertiary fan to its fin arrays. Yes, this does mean making the fins a touch narrower (40mm vs ~48mm); however, the combination of not that much less surface area (as the fins in the MA620 are not rectangular and rather are steeply sloped inwards from the outer edges) with much greater air movement, means the Hyper 622 trades in some elegance for superior real-world cooling performance. Once again, this a tradeoff most people will gladly make. Especially in a world where latest gen Ryzen 5 and Core-I 5 class CPUs are pumping out a veritable ton of heat.
When compared to Thermalright and DeepCool options things are not so cut in and dry in the performance of the array(s) department. All three coolers have overall similar dimensions and use advanced ‘faces’ to their dual ~40mm deep cooling fin array towers. All get the job done and the differences are going to be rounding error of a rounding error. The same is true of the heat pipe configuration. All of the various options discussed here use the same left to right ‘row’ layout that Noctua first made famous back in the air cooler halcyon days of yore.
With that said, in the aesthetics department there is no comparison. Much like the MA620 is in a different class compared to the Hyper 622, the Hyper 622 is noticeably superior compared to all the Chinese competitors. The deep, rich… down right thick paintjob of the Hyper 622 is just outstanding. Even the DeepCool AK620 Zero Dark (which is our opinion the best of the Chinese clones) is inferior in this regard. Bluntly stated, the 622 is a cooler that looks like an 80 or even 90 dollar cooling solution. The others do not. They look like, at best, $50 cooling solutions.
