Corsair H50 CPU Cooler Preview.

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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28 Full Minutes of CPU Cooling Excitement! Well, maybe not, but at least we show you very detailed testing and results along the way. Our official "review" will be in 30 to 45 days along with a full HSF Roundup for Q309. :)

About 2/3 down the page. Sorry for the scroll. Permalink is hose.
Video.
 
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Interesting that you had it set up to bring in air. What if you used the 120mm fan to exhaust air as you would in a traditional setup, provided you had proper airflow to begin with? Would this render the H50 irrelevant? It just seems bass ackwards to me to bring in even more hot air into your system when the point is to dissipate it away from your CPU and out of the chassis, especially in these days of 200W+ graphics cards...
 
...which begs the question: how come there aren't any "TRUE-looking" radiators out there for enthusiasts?

Makes sense that the TRUE outperforms it - one glance at that little radiator and you can tell it won't dissipate heat as well as the TRUE or similar heatsinks.

I wonder if that little pump would be strong enough for a dual rad.
 
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Any way you can mount the h50 with two fans via traditional pull/push config and have both fans exhausting out the case instead of into the case? Would be grand!
 
...which begs the question: how come there aren't any "TRUE-looking" radiators out there for enthusiasts?

Makes sense that the TRUE outperforms it - one glance at that little radiator and you can tell it won't dissipate heat as well as the TRUE or similar heatsinks.

I wonder if that little pump would be strong enough for a dual rad.

Radiators don't offer up much restriction.
 
FYI, with the original Asetek LCLCs, I think most installs generally pull air out of the case through the radiator. I can't see why anyone would want to push air through the radiator, adding glorious heat to your case internals. Is this the recommendation for the Corsair H50?

Mehen, Asetek supplies 2 x 120mm radiator designs to OEMs. HP Blackbird and Firebird use it, for example... but they often cool 2 GPUs as well.
 
Hey Kyle, that was a really well done review. I loved that you let the numbers speak for themselves and I don't think anyone can argue with the tests that you did.

For those that are slightly attention deficient, it would be nice to be able to skip to the 'good parts', maybe having your results published with the video. That being said, I really enjoyed your review.

Observation 1: Wow those are high temps... I try to keep my max load under 70c at 100% cpu utilization, I thought a comment on long term usage at those temperatures would have been fun. (I think you made a small comment about how the CPU throttles at 100c, but nothing else in terms of long term use)

Observation 2: Let's face it, the Thermalright True 120 is a much better solution. It performs better under load, it's cheaper (nearly half the price of the Corsair H50) and it's been out for years already.

Compared to the newcomer Corsair that costs twice as much, heats up your entire system and doesn't perform as well... I found it to be painfully obvious that you were "being nice" to Corsair by trying to find redeeming points. I suppose it's difficult to bash a product sent by a company that you support and I understand that. That might work better on paper but on video your body language and tonality seemed to indicate that you had a soft side for Corsair.

This seemed to be a oft Review instead of the usual [H]ard I'm used to seeing.

ps. I acknowledge and agree that in very poorly ventilated systems, having a radiator fan at the back in the case of the H50 could be beneficial... but most people purchasing aftermarket cooling for their processor are very likely to already have decent airflow in their case.

And in terms of footprint... I agree the True 120 is larger, but you DID have to dremel the side of your case to fit Corsair's H50 kit. I think modifying the case is a bigger deal than having a big heatsink that makes things fit tightly.
 
Wow that is full of fail sorry to say.

Why do they recommend bringing the air INTO the case? That makes no sense! That would push VRM temps over the limit with my EVGA Classified in about five minutes. No I really think the fan should be on the inside of the case pushing THROUGH the radiator exhausting the hot air OUT. As you mention having good airflow through the case is important and if you do your case temps will be within a degree of ambient temp.

Those temps are scary considering Prime95 blend hardly produces max heat. Try linpack. I'd be willing to bet you'd be in the 90's at 3.6/1.3Vcore which is quite bad. This cooler compared to the Intel STOCK cooler may be impressive but I see it losing to TRUE/IFX14/Prolimatech etc. The only way I see it beating a TRUE by 15 degrees is something was really wrong with the testing like they loaded only one core or had the radiator in front of an A/C unit!

Your TRUE had a good mount as your core to core variance in temps is excellent IMO.
 
I see that you have been working on a Classified board, how long has it been since you got that? 30-50 days?
 
The way corsair has it set up is not well thought out. I am wondering how it would do with the fan simply turned around to pull air through the radiator and then you could turn the side fan too so its an intake like I believe they are supposed to be. Then you would have intak right next to the exhaust for the radiator probably making it more efficient at killing the heat.
 
Wow that is full of fail sorry to say.

Why do they recommend bringing the air INTO the case? That makes no sense!

It makes perfect sense. You want cold air going through the radiator. The only way to get cold air to pass through that radiator is to pull from the outside of the case.
 
It would be interesting to see the fan on the radiator inside the case instead of outside. Then, the two fans on the side could both be intake and you'd then be blowing the hot air outside the case.

That would undoubtedly lower case temps as well.
 
It makes perfect sense. You want cold air going through the radiator. The only way to get cold air to pass through that radiator is to pull from the outside of the case.

If you have proper case flow it will be getting air temps approaching ambient WITHOUT all the problems arising from pumping 130+ Watts of heat INTO the case.

The same is true with any cooler. This is why ducting/blowholes/etc. are seen everywhere. Kyle mentions this at the end of the video.

Put this in a box with a pair of 295's on EVGA X58 759 Classified pushing all the heat in the case and the NB and VRM temps will go critical.

IMO if you were going to use this the best way would be to have the radiator reversed so the fan pushed air OUT of the case and make sure you have good air flow OR a duct to bring air with temps at or approaching ambient into this fan. Internal case temps would be much lower.

Now with the stacker 830 (one of my personal favorites) you can arrange fans in the swing out panel in a way to minimize the heating and get the heat OUT of the case but in all practicality it should not be going in there in the first place.
 
Interesting that you had it set up to bring in air.

FYI, with the original Asetek LCLCs, I think most installs generally pull air out of the case through the radiator. I can't see why anyone would want to push air through the radiator, adding glorious heat to your case internals. Is this the recommendation for the Corsair H50?

The way corsair has it set up is not well thought out. I am wondering how it would do with the fan simply turned around to pull air through the radiator and then you could turn the side fan too so its an intake like I believe they are supposed to be. Then you would have intak right next to the exhaust for the radiator probably making it more efficient at killing the heat.

Thanks for you thoughts, Corsair was VERY SPECIFIC about how they wanted the and radiator configured and we did it properly as to their spec. Even sent them movies too showing them we did it right.

Talking to Corsair later today it came to light their their testing was done with EE i7 processors that were never taken over 3.46GHz or 1.2vCore IIRC. So certainly our testing was bit more on the ragged edge than theirs, but I think this is what our readers want to know.

(Edit 0618/09: Corsair told me this morning that they have tested at 3.6GHz at 1.3v. They however have not tested to the 3.8GHz 1.4vCore shown in our video.)

We did do out of chassis testing as well and the unit performed admirably there. Still it bucks the trend of properly cooling your chassis and is expensive. A couple of obvious advantages to it, but nothing to get too excited about, just like the first time Asetek released it.
 
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The air that you're pushing through the radiator has already picked up heat from other components in the case. If you draw air in, it's cooler.
I don't see this as true if you have proper fan intake. The way you're describing you'll be dumping hot air back into the case heating it all up. Also every water cooled pc I've seen that has radiators around the case all of them only exhaust air outside the case, not into.

Edit: Can we have the numbers when the unit is outside the case please?
 
Yea, I think this is sort of meant for the mid-level enthusiast... like the guy who's just getting into building computers/overclocking... it's simple and sort of dummy-proof in the sense that you don't need to worry about airflow as much as with a TRUE... I may sell my Noctua 1366 and grab a TRUE Black w/ Fan bracket though... with the new Corsair case that should look quite nice... ;)

Another application is someone with space-constraints like in an SFF case...
 
If you have proper case flow it will be getting air temps approaching ambient WITHOUT all the problems arising from pumping 130+ Watts of heat INTO the case.

Even with proper caseflow, you're not going to be pulling ambient air through the radiator by using internal case air, you're going to be picking up leftover heat from all of your internal components

Summary: The *coolest* way to run the H50 is by pulling outside air through it's radiator. Even with the best airflow inside your case, you're still going to get better results the way Kyle did it. Why would you argue this? It's common sense
 
I would not feel comfortable running an i7 in the 90s, even over 80 degrees makes me feel bad for the cpu. :< Thanks for the video review, was good for making time go fast at work.
 
Even with proper caseflow, you're not going to be pulling ambient air through the radiator by using internal case air, you're going to be picking up leftover heat from all of your internal components

Summary: The *coolest* way to run the H50 is by pulling outside air through it's radiator. Even with the best airflow inside your case, you're still going to get better results the way Kyle did it. Why would you argue this? It's common sense

Perhaps it may be a degree or two cooler on the cpu itself but the rise to internal case temps is far outweighed by this. It's all about capacity and this unit is obviously overwhelmed by even a moderately overclocked i7. Kyle's post proves that since Corsair's test was even milder. If someone is going to spend this kind of money they'd be better off with another solution IMO. A milder O/C can even be handled by the stock cooler with those kind of temps. Personally I start to get nervous when the temps get over 80-85C. Kyle was using Prime95 which everyone knows does not push the cores to the max temp like IBT/Linpack does. That test will separate the men from the boys. :p
 
Yea, I think this is sort of meant for the mid-level enthusiast... like the guy who's just getting into building computers/overclocking... it's simple and sort of dummy-proof in the sense that you don't need to worry about airflow as much as with a TRUE..

This is sort of how I see it as well. Considering Corsair was only now getting around to testing it on the most popular i7 for overclockers out there....well, that is saying something. Not too concerned about it or so it seems. But I sent them all the video yesterday and they were looking to replicate results this afternoon.
 
You were serious about 28 minutes of video..

Well, I know there are a LOT of folks talking about this thing so I wanted to be very thorough in what we showed about it so all the haters would not be shooting holes in our data later...which they will anyway.
 
[My own little person rant about water-cooling]

I don&#8217;t understand. How can anyone be surprised by these results? It is like putting a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 against Radeon HD 4850 and being surprised that the GTX 285 wins.

Alright let&#8217;s take a step back and think about this for a minute Corsair execs that decided this was a good idea. Simply put a CPU cooling solution is meant to draw heat away from the small surface area of the CPU die to a larger surface area of cooling fins, which is easier to cool. The more surface area you have and the more air flow you have over that surface means your cooling solution is going to be able to dissipate more heat. Taking a look at the Corsair radiator its height and length look about the same as the TRUE but its thickness looks to be between a half to a third less. So for simplicities sake this means you have a half to a third less surface area that can dissipate the heat. That is not even mentioning the extra heat that is dumped into the water because of the pump. So is it really a surprise that these toy water-cooling solutions can&#8217;t measure up in real world testing?

These kinds of systems have been giving water-cooling a bad name for years. People buy these and they think how it is going to be nice and simple to setup. They think they are so smart because they will get the quietness and temps just like the big boys without having to do any of the work. Well you wont and there is no such thing as a free lunch. Corsair you are just taking advantage of your customers by putting out this crap. It&#8217;s blatantly obvious for anyone that takes 5 minutes to think about this that you need to beef up your radiator (and maybe your pump) if you want to market this to the mid to high level CPU users.

So Corsair lets step to the plate and if you are going to do this then do it right, not give water-cooling a bad name, and give your customers something that is actually worthy of their money.

[/rant]
 
[My own little person rant about water-cooling]

I don&#8217;t understand. How can anyone be surprised by these results? It is like putting a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 against Radeon HD 4850 and being surprised that the GTX 285 wins.

Alright let&#8217;s take a step back and think about this for a minute Corsair execs that decided this was a good idea. Simply put a CPU cooling solution is meant to draw heat away from the small surface area of the CPU die to a larger surface area of cooling fins, which is easier to cool. The more surface area you have and the more air flow you have over that surface means your cooling solution is going to be able to dissipate more heat. Taking a look at the Corsair radiator its height and length look about the same as the TRUE but its thickness looks to be between a half to a third less. So for simplicities sake this means you have a half to a third less surface area that can dissipate the heat. That is not even mentioning the extra heat that is dumped into the water because of the pump. So is it really a surprise that these toy water-cooling solutions can&#8217;t measure up in real world testing?

These kinds of systems have been giving water-cooling a bad name for years. People buy these and they think how it is going to be nice and simple to setup. They think they are so smart because they will get the quietness and temps just like the big boys without having to do any of the work. Well you wont and there is no such thing as a free lunch. Corsair you are just taking advantage of your customers by putting out this crap. It&#8217;s blatantly obvious for anyone that takes 5 minutes to think about this that you need to beef up your radiator (and maybe your pump) if you want to market this to the mid to high level CPU users.

So Corsair lets step to the plate and if you are going to do this then do it right, not give water-cooling a bad name, and give your customers something that is actually worthy of their money.

[/rant]

I agree that the cooler hasn't so far seemed to live up to the hype (does anything?) but I wouldn't say all their claims are total bogus yet. There is a BIG difference between running 1.2 vcore and 1.3, as temps go up exponentially with voltage, and even more so with the core speed bump (though that is linear vs temp.) I'd like to see a brief test with Corsair's 1.2v/3.46Ghz core spec.

In any case, it should be fairly obvious that a single rad WC setup (regardless of block or pump) will struggle with the heat output like an overclocked 130W TDP processor. I want to see a little more comparison with the H50 and other mainstream processors (perhaps a 45nm core 2 quad?). I see the H50 being a big hit with SFF builders if it becomes commonly available.

The video contained valuable information and certainly was thorough enough content-wise to keep [H] above the muck of most hardware reviews. (cough.. FrostyTech, lol.. though they are not alone by a long shot) Keep it up, team [H].
 
Pretty disappointing. I figured corsair wouldn't bother going with something like this unless it truly beat high-end air cooling.

This thing is also going to blow a huge amount of dust into your pc without a filter.
 
Reverse the airflow as everyone wants (out, not in) from the back, but duct ambient air from the room in through the case from either the side or the top blowhole, to the radiator, kind of like a piece of macaroni made from dryer vent ducting. You could then get the nice and tidy look with the cooler air that Corsair is insisting on, without having a ton of fans cooling the case interior to get the case temp down. This could interfere with airflow to a top mounted PS, but I still think it would work. I suppose Kyle could have just reversed the cooler to flow out and the closest door fan to blow in to get a similar effect, but Corsair seems weird about this. Interior ducting would isolate the CPU cooling from the rest of the case.
 
Yes, it's dumb to have the radiator putting all the hot air into the case but that's how Corsair wanted it and it reduces the CPU temp more, even if it raises everything else.
 
Yea it would be interesting to see if reversing the fan improves or worsens temps. Even if Corsair did ask you to do it that way, I think that pulling hot air out is equally as important as putting cool air in, but if you have front intake fans pulling in cool-air (like the TRUE had) that should be plenty.

Instead of having it intake-RAD-exhaust out sidepanel, it should have been flipped to intake by sidepanel, and exhaust out the back. Atleast worth a shot for testing purposes.

Sort of rambling, I always liked the idea of these systems if they work on-par with high-end air cooling. Like in an SG05 Mini-itx you can't fit a TRUE, but you could fit one of these on the front 120mm. (Well after you removed the 3.5" HDD cage and used an SSD/2.5" drive) anyways...
 
i had a similar cooler once. it didn't do all that well and i sold it. not surprised by the results here.
 
[My own little person rant about water-cooling]

I don’t understand. How can anyone be surprised by these results? It is like putting a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 against Radeon HD 4850 and being surprised that the GTX 285 wins.

Alright let’s take a step back and think about this for a minute Corsair execs that decided this was a good idea. Simply put a CPU cooling solution is meant to draw heat away from the small surface area of the CPU die to a larger surface area of cooling fins, which is easier to cool. The more surface area you have and the more air flow you have over that surface means your cooling solution is going to be able to dissipate more heat. Taking a look at the Corsair radiator its height and length look about the same as the TRUE but its thickness looks to be between a half to a third less. So for simplicities sake this means you have a half to a third less surface area that can dissipate the heat. That is not even mentioning the extra heat that is dumped into the water because of the pump. So is it really a surprise that these toy water-cooling solutions can’t measure up in real world testing?

These kinds of systems have been giving water-cooling a bad name for years. People buy these and they think how it is going to be nice and simple to setup. They think they are so smart because they will get the quietness and temps just like the big boys without having to do any of the work. Well you wont and there is no such thing as a free lunch. Corsair you are just taking advantage of your customers by putting out this crap. It’s blatantly obvious for anyone that takes 5 minutes to think about this that you need to beef up your radiator (and maybe your pump) if you want to market this to the mid to high level CPU users.

So Corsair lets step to the plate and if you are going to do this then do it right, not give water-cooling a bad name, and give your customers something that is actually worthy of their money.

[/rant]

I think if they were to reduce this to the $60-$70 range, then they would have something. While it's not as good as the TRUE, it's certainly close, and certain setups like an HTPC that can't accomodate tall heatsinks would benefit from this. That being said, we've always said here that to get better-than-air performance, avoid these all in one solutions (with one or two exceptions).
 
Very informative video Kyle , well done. Pretty much the results I expected , as people have previously stated this is more a "noob" level cooler for people that are just exploring new ways of cooling there systems. Still considering the hype I was expecting some better results despite the test bed being in favor of the regular heatsink/fan combo.

Not bad though for a newbie out there wanting to dabble in watercooling while taking little risk.
 
Personally I have good airflow, but I may get the H50 for my next one simply because of size and looks. It does an equal job, and looks a lot nicer.
 
Well, if its simply a modification over the standard ASETEK, and we as enthusiasts expect far better temperatures at higher overclocks than an OEM would concern themselves with, then why would this be expected to perform as an enthusiast level part? Don't they typically load up a dual gpus, and a an overclocked quad core on a 2x120 radiator? Don't they typically do this with 20 & 30c deltas? Which in some cases might provide improvement over standard stock cooling solutions, but more significantly provide the enthusiast cache of Water Cooling, for their marketing department to drive sales?

In the end its the ability of the heat-transfer system to get sufficient heat, to the the fins for forced air dissipation, so like Kyle said, air flow air flow air flow. Although a larger volume of water can help to stabilize temperature spikes. I'm fairly certain that given the same ideal air flow conditions, and the same Fan running at the same speed, that no low-end entry level water-cooling part will ever beat equivalently priced air cooling, and if it manages to do so, you have the added pump noise to deal with.

If an end user wishes to use watercooling that might provide an appreciable difference over the very best that air-cooling has to offer, they should look in to Swifttech H20-220 Compact Liquid Cooling Kit at close to 200 dollars. Or Possibly Petra'sTech CoolKit Elite - Rev.3 at $270.00 (Assembly definitely Required). I would love to see those kits included in the Review.

I can only see one scenario where this or any other compact entry level cooling kit will provide an advantage over liquid cooling, and that is in those unique situations where you can not place one of those huge air coolers in SFF type system. Short of that, I hope that you advice your readers to pick up a TRUE, IFX-14, or a Megahalems.





great preliminary review.
 
Kyle, excellent preview. You were very thorough and provided us with exactly what we wanted to see. I am very excited about the Hydro Series and will probably get one to play around with. Please keep on top of Corsair about their system configuration that allowed them to claim a 15 degree delta over the True with their testing, because I would very interested in trying to replicate that if it is true.

Great work as always and I look forward to "official" review in the coming month.
 
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