I was thinking of getting a Corsair H50 but was wondering if it would fit OK in my Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gamer case. Can anyone comment on the performance of the cooler? Is it worth the money?
what CPU have you got? what overclock are you aiming at? 4Ghz i5 750 zero problem, the H50 is too good for it (never passed 70c). 4Ghz i7 860 is pushing it a little bit, but still okay (around 85c).
I've got a x2 550. It's just running on the stock cooler at 3.6GHz. Just want to push the chip as fair as possible.
waste of money. not going to get much farther on the corsair than you can get an an a/c freezer...at least, that has been my experience.
I don't think you will squeeze much more out of that chip, even if you have some high-end motherboard. But 3.6GHz on stock is not bad at all. As trig said, H50 is a waste of money here. Get yourself a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 and you will save yourself lots of money, plus you will gain lots of cooling capability over your stock cooler.
The H50 is a great cooler, but it also has the water-premium. I'm currently using a H50, but had I actually paid something, I would have grabbed a cheap air cooler instead. For a dual core Phenom any proper air cooler will easily be enough.
Get the Scythe Mugen 2 as that is the best air cooling for the AM3 socket. Unfortunately, the H50 seems to work best on socket 775, 1156 and 1366 only.
That is entirely true. Few issues ago (somewhere about September last year?) I read Corsair's review in Custom PC. And results were clear not much in the favour of AMD cooling capabilities. This article convinced me to buy H50 as for any foreseeable future I will be going with Intel. If you really need the best of the air cooling then go for Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme Rev. C or Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir. But in my opinion - even super overclocked - your CPU doesn't have that huge heat output to justify buying Corsair H50. Those two won't even brake a sweat and stay very silent as they handle quad-core i7 oc'd past 4GHz no problem (not to mention they cost about half the price of H50 as well). Reviews seem to be in favour of Titan Fenrir.
Bit-Tech also recommends the Fenrir. Alternatively, and for around a tenner less, the Gelid Tranquillo (also BiT recommended) is 95% as capable but a lot quieter. Given the rather low heat output of your chip, I'd be tempted to go with the Tranquillo, which is not only quieter and cheaper but a much more manageable size too... I don't really 'get' the H50 either; or, more specifically, I don't know who it's aimed at. It's not powerful enough for hardcore overclockers - they need proper water or colder-than-ambient cooling, it's not powerful enough for amateur benchmarkers - a big air cooler is ultimately better and they don't mind the wind-tunnel roar, and it's too expensive for almost everyone else. If you have a very confined space - SG05, PC-Q07, that sort of thing - I can understand. But otherwise... Why?
PureSilver - H50 is for people like me - Intel CPU using enthusiast overclocker that want to achieve medium to high overclock without wind tunnel sound. Some of us need to sleep in the same room where computer works 24/7. That is the purpose of H50. I agree it's pricey, especially when you consider that if you really want this to be very capable and quiet solution, you need to replace the fan to something like that: Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm 1150 RPM (recommended by Custom PC as it has enough static pressure); which only adds another £14 to the overall cost. But now as I switch from LGA775 to 1156 I can reuse it and use it's full capabilities. In summary, for some people it is a very good choice indeed. But we got off the topic. H50 is not a very good choice in this case though and I still strongly recommend to go for the air cooling.
