It's not often we see serious innovation in air cooling; many merely spin on tried and tested formulae. That's not the case here, however, as the Cooler Master V8 Ace 3DHP is offering something new to PC builders: 3DHP technology.
I first glimpsed the 3DHP (3D Heat Pipe) tech in a backroom of Cooler Master's Taipei HQ in 2025. I was under a strict oath not to talk about anything I saw in that room, which was easy enough, as it was almost empty except for a pair of air coolers: one using a traditional U-shape heatpipe design and the other using 3DHP. The 3DHP design includes an additional heatpipe at the centre of the U-shape.
The benefit of this extra heatpipe is clear through a thermal imaging camera: there's no deadzone (cool patch) in the middle of the cooler. For the V8 Ace, in particular, 3DHP is used on two of its six heatpipes—the two big ones in the middle—with the other four in a more traditional layout. Altogether, there are a lot of heatpipes running through every part of this single-tower cooler.
That's the thing to remember when looking over the results from my testing with the V8 Ace 3DHP below. It's a single-tower cooler competing with the very best dual-tower co...
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