Cooler Master Cooling X Mini PC Review: Powerful, Compact Gaming
Cooler Master Cooling X PC Review: CPU, System, Productivity, And Gaming Benchmarks
The Cooling X's 16-core / 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X3D and GeForce RTX 4080 are backed by 64GB DDR5 system RAM and 4TB of fast M.2 storage, which should work together to achieve some fairly higher performance.
We started our tests by checking storage performance. Cooler Master equipped the system with a pair of Kingston drives, a Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD as the boot drive, and a Kingston NV2 PCIe NVMe 4.0 M.2 SSD for data, both with 2TB capacity. These are advertised as offering up to 7,300/7,000MB/s and up to 3,500/2,800MB/s read/write speed, respectively – so the boot drive is considerably faster than the data drive.
We started our tests by checking storage performance. Cooler Master equipped the system with a pair of Kingston drives, a Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD as the boot drive, and a Kingston NV2 PCIe NVMe 4.0 M.2 SSD for data, both with 2TB capacity. These are advertised as offering up to 7,300/7,000MB/s and up to 3,500/2,800MB/s read/write speed, respectively – so the boot drive is considerably faster than the data drive.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The difference in performance between the two storage solutions is clear from the graphs. For most day-to-day tasks the NV2 drive is adequate, but if you are working on storage intensive video editing, or frequently loading large data files or games, the >2X better sequential performance of the boot drive will be noticeable.
Speedometer 2.0 Benchmark
Next up is the Speedometer 2.0 web content test available at browserbench.org. Scores in this benchmark relate to the performance users might see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. The Cooling X was tested using Windows 11 Pro and the latest version of the Chrome browser as of press time.
It is clear that Intel flagship processors excel in this test, but our Ryzen-powered system was no slouch. Rather than take these numbers as indicative of any serious performance advantage, we suggest that they are used to simply ensure the system has no obvious web performance flaws. Suffice to say, even the most complex of web apps aren’t going to be held back by the kinds of systems represented in our results table – they all fly.
Cinebench R23 Rendering Benchmark
This benchmark uses the same 3D rendering engine as Maxon’s Cinema 4D professional 3D visualizing application. It is highly processor intensive and helps paint a detailed picture of CPU performance using single- and multi-threaded workloads.
The Cooling X result here falls exactly where we expected it to, just below its non 3D V-Cache enhanced brethren, the Ryzen 9 7950X. AMD markets the X3D enhanced version of the chip as a great choice for gamers due to its massive allotment of cache. But, X3D chips are generally clocked lower than the standard parts. In apps like Cinebench where the large cache makes little performance difference, those higher clocks mean the Ryzen 9 7950X can deliver more multi-threaded performance, even with a similar core count.
Blender 3D Rendering Benchmark
Let’s look at another 3D rendering app, this time the free and open source Blender. Using version 3.3.0, we ran the preset trio of rendering models on the CPU, and collected the results below.
This was a great result for the 3D V-Cache enhanced Ryzen 9 7950X3D used in the Cooling X, which is outgunned only by its more power thirsty brother.
Geekbench v5.4.1 System Benchmark
Geekbench runs quite a lengthy set of tests including encryption, image compression, HTML5 parsing, physics calculations, and other general purpose compute workloads.
This is the first convincing win for the 7950X3D vs the 7950X, so far. Clearly, some of the tests here that benefit from the 3D V-Cache. Having said that, it is clear Intel chips are favored by this benchmark, with even 13th Gen Core processors earning higher scores than the best AMD consumer chips, at the time of writing.
PCMark 10 System Productivity And Content Creation Benchmark
PCMark 10 uses a mix of real-world applications and simulated workloads to assess how a system performs productivity tasks, like image and video editing, web browsing, and document editing. We sort the results on the overall PCMark score, which is the first (gray) bar in each group.
There is a lot at play during these tests and a system’s GPU, memory, and storage performance can weigh heavily on the results. For quick reference, the Essentials test covers everyday PC workloads and app startup time (disk sensitive), Productivity tests encompass office app performance where large documents and spreadsheets are worked upon, and Digital Content Creation tests run a plethora of photo and video editing, and rendering and visualization tasks, which are CPU and GPU sensitive. The combination of components in the Cooling X landed it in the top quadrant here.
3DMark Time Spy DirectX 12 Gaming Benchmark
As we move into more gaming and graphics oriented tests, the GeForce RTX 4080 and X3D-equipped CPU in the Cooling X should be able to spread their legs a bit. Cooler Master’s Cooling X performs pretty much as expected, rubbing shoulders with the Maingear MG-1, which features the same GPU.
AMD Ryzen processors typically perform worse than competing Intel processors in this benchmark's CPU-related physics tests, which pulls down the overall score somewhat. Still, overall performance is in-line with other systems featuring the same GPU, which is great for such a compact system.
3DMark Port Royal DirectX Raytracing Benchmark
Port Royal was released as an update to UL's popular 3DMark suite. It is designed to test the real-time ray tracing performance of graphics cards that support Microsoft DirectX Raytracing, or DXR.
Once again, the Cooling X with its GeForce RTX 4080 performs as expected. Let’s move on to some real gaming…
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker MMORPG Benchmark
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker launched at the end of 2021. It will test your PC's ability to run the game at various settings, and presents a final result with an overall rating upon its conclusion. We tested Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker in 4K UHD, with "Maximum" image quality settings.
Here the Cooling X runs neck and neck with the other systems that feature a GeForce RTX 4080 and isn’t far behind the 14900K-powered test system with the beefed-up RTX 4080 Super GPU.
Forza Horizon 5 Racing Game Benchmark
Forza Horizon 5 is a popular, fast-paced open-world racer from Microsoft and Playground Games. This title leverages the proprietary ForzaTech 3D engine and DirectX 12 Ultimate to deliver much larger maps than its predecessors, with more detailed models and higher graphics fidelity in general, including some ray-traced reflection effects. We tested the game in 4K with the "Extreme" graphics preset.
The Cooling X showed some strength here, coming second in our chart and outpacing rival machines with RTX 4080/Super GPUs (as well as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which does well in Forza). Its minimum observed frame rates in this 4K test were excellent, too. Only NVIDIA's current flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card offered higher performance.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Benchmark
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is an action-adventure game where you play as Star-Lord and lead the rest of the Guardians from mission to mission. The game’s minimum requirements call for hardware as meager as a Radeon RX 570 or GeForce GTX 1060-class GPU, but it also supports some of the latest graphics technologies, including DXR and DLSS. We tested in 4K UHD with every in-game setting maxed out.
The average frame rate of 74 FPS over several tests was a good showing for the Cooling X. Similarly, the minimum frame rate was good, as it aligns well with the Hot Hardware RTX 4080 test bench and outruns the Maingear MG-1, which packs the same graphics card.
F1 22 Formula 1 Racing Benchmark
F1 2022 is an older version of Codemasters' Formula One racing simulation, but one for which we have a good range of data. Like previous versions of the game, it sports impressive faced-paced 3D visuals. This was the first year that the game included support for DirectX 12 Ultimate out of the box, and it incorporates a number of AMD and NVIDIA technologies like FSR 2.2 and DLSS Frame Generation. We tested F1 2022 with its Ultra High graphics preset, without any upscaling technologies applied.
The Cooling X performed admirably here. Its average frame rate was great at the 4K Ultra settings, and thankfully the minimum frame rate stayed consistently above 60 FPS.
Overall, the compact Cooler Master Cooling X desktop has performed as expected, which is a good thing considering its compact chassis. Next up, let's check out this PC's power, thermals, and noise output...
