Cooler Master ML360 Illusion Review

Cooler Master was founded in 1992, and has been producing cutting edge products for the computer space since its inception. They have been one of the leading manufactures for computer hardware and continue to produce innovative products to this day! Cooler Master has a wide portfolio of products including computers cases, power supplies, liquid cooling solutions, peripherals, and more.

Cooler Master has been gracious enough to send me a Master Liquid ML360 Illusion for review, so lets get right to it!

Specifications and Features

Cooler Master has outdone themselves with this cooling solution. The newly designed Translucent pump top allows the 12 Addressable Gen 2 RGB LEDs to shine bright and make a vibrant statement. The pump top also has a rotatable logo to make sure you can display the Cooler Master logo off in the proper orientation for your setup. This solution has been paired with the MasterFan 120mm ARGB fans, which is a great compliment to the translucent pump top. The fans offer 24 addressable Gen 2 RGB LEDs to allow the user to come up with a plethora of color combinations. Cooler Master has put a new Generation 3 dual chamber pump in this cooling solution to bring down the noise and increase the performance, all thanks to an improved design on the internal impeller.

Experience a quieter cooling performance with an improved design on the internal impeller and housing to enhance the cooling performance and efficiency while lowering the noise level.

Source

The other big feature that Cooler Master has put into this solution, is to increase the width of the radiator water channels by 25% over their previous unit. This is a huge increase in surface area and should show us some great performance numbers.

EXPANDED DISSIPATION SURFACE AREA
Widened radiator water channels for increased cooling surface area.

Source

Key Features

• Translucent Dome Top with Aluminum Pump
• MasterFan MF120 Fans
• 3rd Generation Dual Chamber Pump
• Expanded Dissipation Surface Area
• ARGB Gen 2 Controller

Source

Packaging and Accessories

Powered up and shining

Testing and Performance

For testing the performance of the AIO, I ran through our Benchmark Test suite and my standard stress test setup. FCLK was set to 1900 and Memory Frequency was set to DOCP of the memory modules at 3800MHz, this was done for all testing scenarios. For my benchmark suite I allotted 5 minutes between runs and 30 minutes between test changes. To make the most of the stress tests I ran each for 30 minutes and gave 30 minutes between each test run.

Stock settings are, outside of the outlined above, just as the setup would perform out of the box. For our PBO runs of testing I set the PBO limits to that of the motherboard. This allows PBO to stretch its legs as far as it will go. Our standard OC profile is 4600Mhz 1.25v all core. While more could be pushed, it was not stable for certain testing scenarios.

Working through both of our synthetic stress tests, it was apparent that this was going to be a fantastic cooling solution. Temperatures were kept well in check and left plenty of headroom. Prime95 in its Small FFT setting is by far one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest, loads you can put on your system. The Cooler Master ML360 Illusion handled it like a champ, and made sure to keep the CPU well within its thermal limits. When I swapped over to Aida64 and went through a 30 minute session, it was fantastic. The cooling solution just gave us great peace of mind for pushing our 5900X to its limits on this type of cooling solution.

Aida64 Download 
Prime95

After running the rest of our test suite, the Cooler Master ML360 Illusion continued to show us that it was here to perform great and look exceptional. Both iterations of Cinebench(R20 and R23) along with Geekbench 5 gives us a good suite of synthetics that will push the CPU a bit and push some heat into cooling solution, and just lets us see how well the the setup performs.

Cinebench R20 Download
Cinebench R23 Download 
Geekbench 5 Download

Final Thoughts

Cooler Master hit it out of the park with this cooling solution. From the translucent pump top with the beautiful ARGB behind it, to the sleek ARGB setup inside the MasterFan MF120s, this setup just looks gorgeous. I can’t say enough how awesome it was to set this cooling solution up, mess around with Cooler Master’s ARGB software, and just looking into all the glorious ARGB this solution provides. Performance wise this setup came in just behind EKWB’s Basic 360 AIO for most scenarios, but I believe this to be to the fan profiles. Fans can make or break a cooling solution, and while Cooler Master’s MF120 fans may not pump out the airflow that EKWB’s Vardars did, the Cooler Master solution is miles ahead in terms of looks and at a price point of £139.99, it is easy to mark this as a must have product.

Want to discuss this product or give your views and feedback from your own usage? Discuss on the ExtremeHW Forums

Like our content? Please consider Donating to help us to continue our writing.