Cooler Master MA824 Stealth Review: Expensive Big Air Excellence

Cooler Master’s influence in the realm of PC cooling is undeniable. Well known for products like the classic Hyper 212 Evo air cooler and its giant HAF series of PC cases amongst other offerings, the company has recently been expanding its offerings even further, with its MasterHub modular Stream Deck competitor impressing us at Computex recently.

I was also impressed when I demoed the company’s Cooling X pre-built system at CES, an interesting fanless pre-built computer, that features a 7950X3D and RTX 4080 in a unique liquid loop, which utilizes the computer case to act as a giant heatsink to cool the components effectively without fans. 

Next month, Cooler Master will also be launching its new MasterControl software which will offer control of cooling and other hardware via an open API. Today though, we’re looking at Cooler Master’s latest air cooler, the MA824 Stealth. The company is clearly aiming for air cooling supremacy here. The Stealth a formidable challenger that features 8 heatpipes of varying widths, upgraded fans, and a supremely simple installation process. But is that enough to outmatch Noctua’s NH-D15S? 

To answer that question, I rested the Noctua’s king of air cooling specifically for this review to find out if the MA824 has what it takes to dethrone Noctua and land a spot in our list of best coolers. But before we look at the benchmarks, let’s look at the features and installation of this cooler.

Cooler Specifications

Packing and Included Contents 

Cooler Master’s MA824 MasterAir Stealth arrives in a box that’s pretty large for an air cooler, at 8x10x9.5 inches. But of course, this isn’t a small cooler.

The inner contents are protected with foam, cardboard, and plastic – ensuring the cooler arrives in pristine condition no matter how rough the shipping was.

Included with the package are the following:

• Dual-tower heatsink with pre-installed 140mm fan
• 1x 120mm fan
• Fan Clips
• Mounts for all modern CPU sockets (including AM5 and LGA1700)
• PWM splitter cable
• Thermal paste
• Screwdriver
• Manual & Warranty leaflets

Installation on LGA1700 and AMD AM4 AM5

Cooler Master has clearly prioritized user convenience with the Master Air MA824 Stealth. The installation process has been streamlined to the point that I would consider it one of the easiest coolers to install. 

It’s very simple, whether you’re using an AMD Ryzen- or Intel-based motherboard. Users of any and all experience levels should find no difficulty during installation.  

First, if you’re running an AMD Ryzen system, you’ll need to start by removing the default retention bracket. Intel users will need to apply the backplate to the motherboard. Next, for either CPU company, secure the mounting standoffs to the motherboard.

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Then, place the mounting bars above the mounting standoffs and secure them with the included thumbscrews.

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Take the heatsink and press it against the mounting bars, then secure using the screws on top of the cooler.

Lastly, attach the back 120mm Mobius fan using the included clips, and then connect the fans to the motherboard using the included PWM splitter cable.

Features of Cooler Master’s MA824 Stealth

⋇ Eight Heatpipes, Pre-Applied thermal paste

Cooler Master’s MA824 Stealth features eight heatpipes, which is the most we’ve ever seen included on an air cooler. But these heatpipes are a little different than those included with other coolers. Most cooling heatpipes are of uniform thickness, but the thickness of the MA824’s heatpipes varies.

The cooler arrives with Cooler Master’s Cryofuze thermal paste pre-installed on the cooler.

⋇ 42mm RAM Compatibility

The back end of the MA824 is recessed, allowing for 42mm (1.65 inches) of clearance for DDR4 or DDR5 DIMMs.

⋇ Full Mini-ITX compatibility

Some high end air coolers won’t fit properly on a Mini-ITX motherboard - but that’s not a problem with Cooler Master’s MA824 Stealth, it fits motherboards both large and small.

⋇ Solid all black “Stealth” design

The MA824 features a solid, all black, “stealth” design with an aluminum top cover and no aRGB lighting.

⋇ Two Mobius fans, 120mm and 140mm

There’s more to a cooler than just the heatsink or radiator. The bundled fans have a significant impact on cooling and noise levels. The MA824 comes with two fans: one pre-installed 140mm that’s not designed to be removed, and one 120mm fan. Both fans are from Cooler Master’s new Mobius lineup, which deliver strong airflow at low noise levels. 

Cooler Master advertises the following features with its Mobius lineup of fans:

• Ring Blade Design (RBD): Interconnecting fan blades designed for a reinforced and rigid structure, eliminating vibration for stable and fluid fan operation.
  
• Angled inner frame rim with chambered side vents boost airflow draw, maximizing force induced air pressure and diminishing dead air.
  
• Loop Dynamic Bearing: New bearing design utilizes thick oil coating and lubrication to allow for stable performance.
  
• Oil Reflow: The oil flows back to the sealed bearing to create constant lubrication against friction and increases the lifespan of the fan.
  
• Anti-Sway System: a magnetic ring prevents the bearing shaft from tilting, stabilizing the fan to prevent fan blade obstruction under various orientations.

CPUs Used for Testing

Modern CPUs, whether Intel or AMD, are difficult to cool in intensive workloads. In the past reaching 95C+ on a desktop CPU might have been a cause for concern – but with today’s top-end CPUs, this is considered normal operation. Similar behavior has been present in laptops for years due to cooling limitations in tight spaces. 

Since last fall, Tom’s Hardware has brought you cooling reviews using one of the most power-hungry desktop CPUs on the market – Intel’s flagship i9-13900K. To give you an idea of what it takes to cool Intel’s behemoth, we’ve tested it with a variety of coolers from basic low-end air coolers like the Amazon Basics CPU cooler to high-end 420mm AIOs such as Corsair’s iCUE H170i Elite.

While it’s nice to see how Intel’s flagship responds to different levels of cooling, those results don’t always correlate with lower-tier CPUs. Today’s review features two CPUs more commonly purchased by end users – AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X and Intel’s i7-13700K.

LGA1700 Socket Bending

Note that there are many factors other than the CPU cooler that can influence your cooling performance, including the case you use and the fans installed in it. A system's motherboard can also influence this, especially if it suffers from bending, which results in poor cooler contact with the CPU. 

To prevent bending from impacting our cooling results, we’ve installed Thermalright’s LGA 1700 contact frame into our testing rig. If your motherboard is affected by bending, your thermal results will be worse than those shown below. Not all motherboards are affected equally by this issue. I tested Raptor Lake CPUs in two motherboards. And while one of them showed significant thermal improvements after installing Thermalright’s LGA1700 contact frame, the other motherboard showed no difference in temperatures whatsoever! Check out our review of the contact frame for more information.

Testing Methodology

All testing is performed at 23 degrees Celsius ambient room temperature. Multiple thermal tests are run on each CPU to test the cooler in a variety of conditions, and acoustic measurements are taken with each result. These tests include:

1. Noise-normalized testing at low noise levels

2. “Out of the box”/Default Configuration Thermal & Acoustics Testing

      a.) This means no power limits on Intel’s i7-13700K, and AMD’s default power limits on AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X. 

       b.) Because CPUs hit Tjmax in this scenario, the best way to compare cooling strength is by recording the total CPU package power consumption.

3. Thermal & Acoustics testing in Power Limited Scenarios

      a.) With Ryzen 7 7700X, I’ve tested with limits of 95W and 75W enforced. 

      b.) On Intel’s i7-13700K, I’ve tested with limits of 175W and 125W enforced.

The thermal results included are for 10-minute testing runs. To be sure that was sufficiently long to tax the cooler, we tested both Thermalright’s Assassin X 120 R SE and DeepCool’s LT720 with a 30-minute Cinebench test with Intel’s i9-13900K for both 10 minutes and 30 minutes. The results didn’t change much at all with the longer test: The average clock speeds maintained dropped by 29 MHz on DeepCool’s LT720 and 31 MHz on Thermalright’s Assassin X 120 R SE. That’s an incredibly small 0.6% difference in clock speeds maintained, a margin of error difference that tells us that the 10-minute tests are indeed long enough to properly test the coolers.