T
ypically, people swap out their heatsink/fan apparatus for one that is
either quieter than the stock cooler or capable of better cooling perfor-
mance. Cooler Master’s Intel-only Hyper L3 doesn’t grant enough improve-
ment on either front to warrant a switch. Sure, it’s quiet and its cooling per-
formance is a tad better than the stock unit, but in general the Hyper L3 isn’t
much more than a better-looking version of the standard P4 cooler.
Its design is rather simple. It uses a copper base-plate that’s nickel-
coated to eliminate oxidation. The copper base-plate is attached to a mid-size
aluminum heatsink, with three heat pipes to move the heat from the base
plate into the fins of the heatsink. A 9.2cm fan sits on top. The fan uses a
four-pin design and features pulse-width modulation (PWM), which varies
the fan speed according to CPU temperature during operation. During testing
we never crossed the PWM
threshold, so the fan spun at
1100rpm at all times and was
indeed very quiet.
As the benchmark num-
bers show, the Hyper L3’s
cooling performance is just a
smidgen better than the stock
cooler. We did three mountingsto make sure the numbers were correct, and results were consistent through-
out. On our P4 3.73GHz Extreme Edition test CPU, the Hyper L3 achieved the
same idle temperature as the stock cooler, and was two degrees cooler under
load. These temperatures are decent, but nothing to write home about.
Aside from its ho-hum cooling performance, there’s a problem with the
cooler’s design. Its heat pipes force you to mount it in one particular way,
making the fan cable too short to reach the four-pin PWM port on many moth-
erboards. We just barely got the cable to fit on our Intel test board, and we
were unable to make the reach on an Asus board that we tried.
The Hyper L3’s cable issues combined with not-much-better-than-stock
performance make this CPU
cooler unworthy of high praise.
—JOSH NOREMCooler Master Hyper L3
Cooler Master is not so masterful this time
A
pple and the television networks would like you to pay $2 an episode to
watch TV shows on your iPod. Sony and Hollywood expect you to pay $20
each for movies you can watch on your PSP. Neuros anticipates you’ll spend
$150 for their MPEG-4 Video Recorder 2, so you can tell Apple, Sony, the net-
works, and Hollywood to pound sand.
The MPEG-4 Video Recorder 2 is an ingenious little device (we’ll refer
to it as the MVR2 from now on). Plug in an A/V source, press a button on the
remote and it automatically encodes the signal to MPEG-4 and stores it on
either CompactFlash or Memory Stick Duo media. Plug the Memory Stick into
Sony’s PSP and it’ll play video just like Sony’s UMD discs. Playing these videos
on an iPod (or just about any other handheld video player) requires a quick trip
through a flash memory reader-equipped PC.
The MVR2 would be much less interesting if you had to manually start and
stop each recording session, so Neuros built
a simple user interface into it (displayed on
your TV, since
the device has
no screen of
its own). The
intuitive UI is
very easy to
navigate using
its credit card-
size remote.You can automatically stop recording after one, two, or three hours, or as
soon as the incoming signal ends. The software for recording TV programs
is slightly more thorough: You can establish up to six programs, each with
specific start dates and start/end times; then you can instruct the device to
record whatever is broadcast in these windows just once, every day, or every
week. The device can’t control your TV tuner, of course, so you’ll need a DVR
or VCR for that.
The resulting video quality is quite good, rendering this a useful gadget for
folks hooked on watching video on the small screen. If you could save programs
to cheaper external USB drives rather than the expensive flash
formats, this would be a much
more compelling product.
—MICHAEL BROWNNeuros MPEG-4 Video
Recorder 2
A cool capture device for the little screen
78 MA XIMUMPC APRIL 2006
reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
Neuros’ MPEG-4 Video Recorder 2 enables you to copy and encode
any video content to MPEG-4 SP format, so you can watch it on
Sony’s PSP, Apple’s Video iPod, and other handheld players.7
NEUROS VIDEO RECORDER 2
$150, http://www.neurosaudio.comCOOLER MASTER HYPER L3
$35, http://www.coolermaster.comBENCHMARKS
HYPER L3 STOCK COOLER
IDLE (C) 36 36
100% LOAD (C) 52 54
Best scores are bolded. Temps were recorded using the Asus AI utility. Idle scores were determined after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Full-load temps were achieved running CPU Burn-in for one hour.The midrange Hyper L3 cooler eschews all-out cooling perfor-
mance for silent operation and easy installation.SPECS
VIDEO ENCODER MPEG-4 (with AAC-LS audio)
VIDEO RESOLUTIONS 320x240, 368x208, 640x480
VIDEO DECODERS MPEG-4 SP, Divx 5, QuickTime 6
AUDIO DECODERS MP3, WMA
FILE FORMATS SUPPORTED ASF, AVI, MP4, JPEG, BMP, GIF