Noctua Beater? Cooler Master MasterAir MA824 STEALTH CPU Cooler Review

Why isn’t the front fan black?

Cooler Master’s new MasterAir MA824 STEALTH has the word “STEALTH” in the title, and that often means that a CPU cooler has been designed to be “all black” and “non-RGB”, making the heatsink hard to spot within your PC, especially if your PC has tinted tempered glass windows. 

Sadly, Cooler Master’s MasterAir MA824 STEALTH is not all black, as the cooler utilises a stock Cooler Master Mobius series fan at is front, a fan that had dark navy-coloured blades and rubber vibration dampers, something that we feel goes against this cooler’s otherwise all-black aesthetic.

As you can see below, Cooler Master’s provided fan sticks out like a sore thumb, and simply put we would swap this out with an all-black mobius fan as soon as Cooler Master releases one. We feel that this is a missed opportunity for Cooler Master, as while their Mobius series fans are undoubtedly strong performers, there are many consumers that would prefer it to be an all-black fan design. That said, this aesthetic point is a minor one, especially for those of you have have PC cases without a tempered glass or acrylic window. 

At the front of the MasterAir MA824 STEALTH we have a section of heatsink that is cut away to enable support for larger DDR4/DDR5 memory kits. At stock,. this heatsink supports 42mm tall DRAM kits, but that is with this heatsink’s stock 120mm front fan, which goes below this hollowed out section slightly. This allows the MasterAir MA824 STEALTH to support larger DRAM kits, if users are willing to abandon this heatsink’s front fan. 

Out of the box, Cooler Master’s MasterAir MA824 STEALTH heatsink ships with pre-applied thermal compound. Note the two mounting screws that you can see nestled between the MasterAir MA824 STEALTH’s heatpipes, as these screws are what allow you to mount this CPU cooler to mount to Cooler Master’s CPU brackets. 

This heatsink is a pain to install, as it is not easy to locate these mounting screws at least when compared to heatsinks like Noctua’s NH-D15 and similar heatsinks. Thankfully, users of this heatsink should only need to install it once, making its somewhat difficult installation a minor bugbear.  

At the top of the MasterAir MA824 STEALTH is a metal plate that has a blackened brushed aluminium finish and a tidy Cooler Master logo. Using the top screws on the MasterAir MA824, users can attach this dual-tower heatsink to the heatsink’s mounting kit. As mentioned above, locating these screws on Cooler Master’s mounting kit can be a challenging and annoying process, but once they are located the heatsink is easy to install.

Cooler Master’s MasterAir MA824 STEALTH has well painted fins and well painted heatpipes, giving the heatsink the “STEALTHY” look that the cooler’s name implies. This gives Cooler Master’s latest heatsink a premium look, and it is clear that Cooler Master considered aesthetics heavily when creating this heatsink. That said, we do feel that they somewhat ruined this by not using an all-black front fan.

  
  

 

Inside our CPU cooler test system Cooler Master’s MasterAir MA824 STEALTH has a notable prescense. The ROG STRIX HELIOS case that we use is not a small one, so the fact that this case doesn’t make Cooler Master’s MasterAir MA824 STEALTH look tiny should showcase how large this CPU cooler is. This heatsink would look great beside today’s ultra-large graphics cards, like Nvidia’s RTX 4090 models, or AMD’s RX 7900 XTX designs. Big CPU heatsinks look great beside big graphics cards. 

  

Thermal Performance – A Noctua-beating Air-based CPU cooler