Corsair Reveals Hydro H50 Self-Contained Water CPU Cooler

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

Looking back a few years, I don't remember many companies branching out of their main product line too much, but things have certainly changed since then With Corsair in particular, we've seen various products come out, including their widely-successful PSU line-up, and also their cooling products, which range from the DOMINATOR air RAM fan to the memory water-block.

At Computex, the company has announced their latest entry to the CPU cooler market with the Hydro H50. For the sake of comparison, they're pitting the H50 to the Thermalright Ultra-120, and in their tests (and seen in live demos), their cooler can out-perform the Thermalright by around 15°C, and sometimes even higher.

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While the Thermalright cooler is air-based, the H50 from Corsair is a self-contained water-cooling unit. At its core, it's an Asetek cooler, but Corsair worked with the company for over six months to get the H50 to where it is today, and it works very well. Compared to some air coolers, it's quite silent, and for the $80 price-tag, it's a great option for pretty-much anyone.

In the live demo, two identical machines (aside from the cooler) were running the i7-975 Extreme Edition processor at 4.0GHz, and while the CPU under the Thermalright crashed every half-hour or so, I saw that the H50 was running stable for over six hours, and at around 65°C. That's incredible for an $80 cooler!
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[Doomsday]

Whoa! liquid cooled Ram!!

Does it cool both CPU and Ram like the V10?!?
for $80 its totally worth it!! me wants!

 

[Kougar]

I saw some photos of their comparison platform, and to be honest the way they mounted the TRUE's 120mm fan creates some questions. I've never seen anyone mount the fan that way and it puts it too close to the back case fan. So I'm sure that alone is knocking a few degrees off it's performance.

The Corsair H50 uses Asetek's OEM watercooling kit, which has been sold to OEM's for the past two years.

Whoa! liquid cooled Ram!!

Does it cool both CPU and Ram like the V8?!?
for $80 its totally worth it!! me wants!

It's a self-contained system so no, it's CPU only.

 

[Rob Williams]

The Corsair H50 uses Asetek's OEM watercooling kit, which has been sold to OEM's for the past two years.

That was mentioned in the posting. What are your overall thoughts though? Even if the fan mounting was a little odd, would you still purchase this over a full-blown water-cooling machine, or the Ultra-120?

 

[Kougar]

That was mentioned in the posting. What are your overall thoughts though? Even if the fan mounting was a little odd, would you still purchase this over a full-blown water-cooling machine, or the Ultra-120?

BIt of a delayed reply, I didn't want to comment until I'd seen a review I'd find credible. The performance is indeed really good, and in fact par with the TRUE using a 1600rpm fan apparently. (Not quite as good as their display rig setup after all). Given the price difference I'd suggest sticking to the TRUE just because it's less complex and slightly easier to install... but there are better alternatives to the TRUE now. Not to mention it's not sold very many places anymore...

Right now the COGAGE TRUE Spirit appears to be the cost savings version of the TRUE, performance is identical within a degree or two of the TRUE, but it costs $40. Then there is that Megahalems thing too.

To answer your question if I would buy it instead of a full watercooling system... no. I don't see them serving the same market, a full WC setup would cost more but it would also perform much better. Unless the buyer plans to build a proper WC setup though, I'd probably recommend they stick to just the Corsair H50 instead if they really had to have water.

On major issue with this Corsair H50 is they are apparently mixing a copper block with an aluminum radiator... I'd be worried what the fluid & pump would look like in 1 year, and very worried after 3 years.

 

[b1lk1]

I am hard at work on this product and a review from us will be coming very very soon. I am still cutting my teeth on the new i7 platform we have switched to for all future heatsink/cooling reviews.

As for all in one water solutions like this, I am on the fence as many times you can get similar performance from high end air heatsinks. One important thin to remember that in my personal experience, air cooling usually requires much higher CFM to do the same job as one of these kits with a lower CFM quieter fan.

I will let the results do the real talking, be sure to check back in the very near future!