Corsair H80 Self-Contained Liquid CPU Cooler Review

[Rob Williams]

We mentioned in a recent chassis article that having the best of both worlds where cooling and noise is concerned is difficult, but as Corsair's H80 proves, the same can't be said about CPU coolers. In fact, for both those aforementioned reasons, the H80 might have just become the best CPU cooler we've ever tested.

Check out Ryan's in-depth look at Corsair's H80 CPU cooler and then discuss it here!

 

[Doomsday]

If this becomes available here, I am sooooooooo gonna get it!!!! Awesome!!

 

[Rob Williams]

If this becomes available here, I am sooooooooo gonna get it!!!! Awesome!!

No kidding! I don't regret getting the H60 per se when I upgraded this build, but after seeing the performance of this beast, and realizing I have a six-core... what was I thinking? Should have waited

 

[Kayden]

Those are some fantastic temps. I have no prob recommending that sucker to anyone who want something with WC efficiency but doesn't want to go all out. Now, if my MCEPC had a 120mm fan outlet I would consider it, but since I don't not something I can contemplate unfortunately.

I will say this my rig will keep my CPU at 28c @20c ambient. At load I will hit around 38 to 43c depending on what I am doing. Of course my cost is much higher and not many want to go the route I did.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

Wow...that's amazing. Might look into that after I get another car. lol

 

[Optix]

Like I said, my reaction was a four letter word when I came back and checked the maximum temperature. I figured it would be more in line with the gradual improvement that is found when starting at the H50 and going up to the H70.

We haven't been able to get an Antec sample in yet but I'd love to get them, if not for a review but just for some comparison numbers considering CoolIT and Asetek have been in the all in one cooling game longer than anybody else.

Thermaltake has launched their own all in one liquid cooler as well and there was one shown at CES in January from Cooler Master. I'd be over the moon happy to see the one from Cooler Master because I don't know if it's designed in conjunction with any of the aforementioned companies.

If it's designed in house, it will give us a chance to see another competitor.

 

[Doomsday]

No kidding! I don't regret getting the H60 per se when I upgraded this build, but after seeing the performance of this beast, and realizing I have a six-core... what was I thinking? Should have waited

This is something all PC hardware loving dudes suffer from!

 

[Unregistered]

Uhhhh

How are you going to test an enthusiast cooler on a mainstream processor?

Test this $90 cooler on a 2500k or 2600k if you're going to test it at all. Of course it's going to be quiet... the stock cooler will be pretty quiet too with an i5-2400.

 

[Optix]

I was wondering when someone would call us on that, and you're right, the H80 would be louder when cooling a chip at 4.8Ghz pushing 1.3v+ through it instead of a mainstream model at 3.8Ghz with 1.25v.

Fan noise is only one part of the equation though. What's the primary function of a cooler? To cool. Do we see noticeable differences between coolers even when running a rather tame test system? Yes, and more so with the H80 than any other cooler so I believe that our setup is sufficient.

What I would like to remind you is that even with the fans on the lowest setting the chip topped out at 43 degrees while overclocked and put under full load. This is better than what a stock cooler could even hope to do. I feel confident that even if the H80 was slapped on a K-series chip that is put under more stress, the fans likely wouldn't spin up to 100% simply based on the cooling ability of the cooler overall. This thing is is just flat-out designed well.

If you're pushing 1.4-1.5v through the chip, sure, the fans will ramp up a bit but if you're doing that you should probably be looking at a custom loop.

 

[Rob Williams]

When we created this test suite, we had to work with what we had. In a future iteration, should we start over from scratch, we'll be sure to have a hotter CPU in there to cool. I am still confident in our results, however, as Optix mentions, there is still good scaling going on. If all CPU coolers seemed to peak out the temperatures all the same, it'd be a problem. But as it stands, we are still seeing improvements with better coolers.