Hardware Corsair Hydro Series H80i GT and H100i GTX Reviews

I've always fancied trying one of these type coolers and then I look at the installed pictures and remember why I haven't...all those bloody wires trailing everywhere.

From a aesthetic point of view, i hate it. Just too damn messy compared to a simple air cooler, and it must be said not 'that' much cooler.

 

I've just started running an H100i on my X5650 and I've stuck it in the top of my case with the fans drawing air in. So far idle speeds are around 22 degrees and after pushing it on Prime95 for a while, things went up to a steady 39 before dropping immediately on stopping prime95 to 25.

This was keeping everything set at automatic in the link software.

 

Once you try one, you will never go back to air. Simple to fit, doesn't cut your hands to ribbons, doesn't get in the way of any RAM modules, cools better and is quieter.

 

Seems a bit like they are launching new models just for the sake of it as Link is redundant due to what mainboards offer in regards to fan / pump speed control and monitoring.
(except for some random £25 Biostar board because they are highly unlikely to be allowed in the same building).

 

But I'm running a £20 Raijintek air cooler that keeps my 4690K (@4.5Ghz) below 70c even during the most stressful game/application use, all four RAM slots are filled and is/was as simple as anything to fit.

So why, apart from aesthetic reasons would I want to spend more than a £100 on cooling? and like I said, all those damn wires everywhere ruin the aesthetics for me.

..oh and another thing, there is no risk, albeit small, of one day water leaking out and frying my motherboard/Graphics cards.

 

Although I don't have a water cooling solution yet, I feel I can back them up.
Firstly, your temps should be kept well below 70 degrees, thereby extending your CPU lifespan. This should save you some pennies unless you're into compulsively upgrading every year or so.

Also, unless I'm mistaken all that wasted heat energy from using an air cooler is going to cost you more in wattage as well (?)

Finally, I'd say that there is also a small (see:tiny) risk of the heatpipes rupturing on your cooler, through corrosion, rapid expansion for w/e reason etc, kind of negating the point you made about water leaking.

Unless you like using your PC as a backup radiator, I just don't see the point in needing Air Cooling any more. As soon as next month hits, i'll be getting an H80 to keep my PC running as long, and as cool, as possible.

 

For Intel CPUs 70c is way inside safe limits for long term operation, I've never heard a CPU dying from heat unless abused (such as old cpus ran with no cooling). Nothing is gained in itself from running it cooler, cooling is more about how quietly you can do it. If serious overclocking is involved on high TDP chips then water cooling is very good for shifting the heat to ensure stability.

Air/water cooling does not change the 'waste heat', they just vary in how effective they are at moving it from the source to a dissipating surface, and the effect size of that surface.

Heatpipes fail much less often less than liquid cooling, it's not really comparable, and their mode of failure doesn't eject fluid over the insides

The big bad of PC cooling has been the GPU for a long time, and now more than ever the temperature is related to the performance one can extract from it, unlike the CPU where the top few % of performance to be gained from overclocks generally necessitates a significant outlay in terms of cooling expense and voltage margins.

2016 needs to be the year GPU AIO water coolers become a thing and people stop wasting time on setups with CPU watercooling that perform no better than cheap air because the silicon itself is the limiting factor.

 

Then I was entirely wrong!
Well thanks for the corrections, but I'm still getting an H80i

My Fury X has an AIO cooler integrated and it's cool as a cucumber (left at ambient temperature at least) even using Heaven to try and max the temperature (sticks to around the 45 degree C mark)
It can't hurt to lower temperatures further, so that's what I intend to do, especially when a decent watercooler is now on par price-wise with the absolute best air coolers.

 

still using the free MSI Dragon 120mm AIO that came free with my mobo - thank you Scan...

 

Also, you don't need to spend £100 for a decent AIO cooler. You can get one for less than half that. Also, only the water puppies show if you cable tidy the power wires. Also, you won't have that huge weight dragging permanently on your mobile either.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

Pipes not puppies as they may wriggle around a fair bit.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

fury x is a good example of another advantage of watercooling, in that you can move the heat about in ways that let you build a tiny card which can be fit into a tiny case, with no loss of ooomph

 

Using an air cooler doesn't mean that your CPU uses less power, assuming you keep everything else (overclock settings etc.) the same.

The chances of that happening are absolutely miniscule, orders of magnitude smaller than a WC setup leaking.

All a WC setup does is move head away from your CPU more efficiently. Your radiator (the clue is in the name) will still warm the air coming out of your computer. The thing about air cooling is that it is often quieter (AIO pumps in particular are somewhat noisy), and almost always cheaper than water cooling. Your CPU might run hotter, but as long it's below the T-MAX, most people are happy with that, because most people don't hammer their CPU 24/7

 

This... this is exactly where my confusion lays regarding WC. I have heard many state that WC is quieter while others are like yourself and claim that WC (mainly the pumps) is noisy.

When I eventually build a new system I want it to be as silent as possible.

 

I actually have no idea what people are talking about when they say the pump is noisy, I have an H100i that's a few years old I have have never heard the pump ever. I opened up my case and stuck my head as close to the cpu as I could safely while it was running and I couldn't even distinguish any noise whatsoever from the pump over the relative noise of the case fans. That's not to say the fans are noisy either, they're pretty close to inaudible even with my case sitting right next to my monitor.

 

Well thank you for confirming my confusion...

 

I hate to say it but I think you are misunderstanding physics here. Just because the CPU is at a lower temperature with a water system does not mean it is outputting any less heat just that the cooler is better at removing the heat from the CPU and putting it into the air.

There is no extra wasted heat with an air cooler, in fact because the water cooler has two fans and a pump it will use more electricity to run.

As to the lifespan of CPUs I highly doubt that there will be any significant number of failures due to the higher temps. Many laptops routinely run at higher temperatures than that - in all my years of owning and abusing PCs I've never had a CPU fail in any machine I've owned.

 

Nice, bumping a fifteen-month-old thread.

 

Haha - yes. The poster being replied to was long since banned too!