Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L RGB Review
A Wallet-Friendly Closed Loop CPU Cooler
When it comes to cooling your CPU, you have a number of viable options, from the stock cooler that may have shipped with your processor, to aftermarket air coolers, closed-loop liquid coolers, and full custom liquid cooling loops. Closed-loop liquid coolers, like the Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240 Lite RGB we’re reviewing in this article, are more popular than ever due to their well-earned reputation for better-than-air cooler performance, and minimal-to-nonexistent short and long-term maintenance. Modern units tend to run quietly, feature a plethora of RGB LEDs and are getting more affordable all the time. Which brings us back to the ML240L RGB, a closed loop liquid cooler that offers a lot in the aesthetics and cooling performance department, without demanding you empty your wallet. To find out if the ML240L RGB is the right CPU cooler for you, read on.
Review Sample Provided by: Cooler Master
Product given in exchange for work done to produce this review.
Packaging
The squarish box that Cooler Master ships the ML240L RGB in has a matte dark gray finish with a full-color image of the lighted cooler and fans dominating the front.
The Cooler Master logo is in the top-right corner, next to the firm’s Make It Yours tagline. Underneath the model name is the phrase “low-profile dual chamber design,” which may refer to the radiator or the water block/pump, or both.
The top-right corner of the box displays informative logos detailing the socket compatibility and highlighting the included RGB splitter and wired three-button RGB controller. (Note, the ML240L RGB supports a much greater range of sockets than the retail box would have you believe.) The lower-right corner of the box front details the RGB support, including 16.7 million colors, as well as certified compatibility with most of the major RGB LED tech from the various motherboard makers, including ASUS AURA SYNC, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and ASRock RGB LED. The left side of the retail box displays the detailed specifications, and the back features a list of the box contents, as well as a technical drawing of everything you’ll find inside.
Upon opening the box, we were pleased to discover that there’s plenty of room between the radiator and the heavy integrated pump/water block unit. The fans are also well insulated from both the outer walls of the box and the other components of the ML240L RGB. Even Ace Ventura would have a hard time damaging this thing in transit.
Inside the box, you’ll find the aforementioned low-profile radiator (it’s just slightly more than an inch thick) attached to the pump/water block with a pair of black mesh sleeved FEP (fluorinated ethylene propylene) tubes. The tubing is very flexible, and the pipe mounting points on the water block/pump offer nearly 90-degrees of rotation each, so you can move the tubes out of the way to ensure the LED-lit logo is always visible through your side panel window. There’s also a thin sheet of foam on top of the components to help keep the recycled-paper insert from sliding around inside the outer box. Other items in the package include a pair of Cooler Master MF120R RGB fans, a universal mounting kit for most of the latest AMD and Intel processors (sorry, Socket TR4, for AMD’s Threadripper processors, is not supported), thermal paste, the requisite cabling and RGB splitter, a three-button RGB controller, and a simple installation manual.
