Corsair Hydro Series H100 Review

The crew at Overclockers Club have posted a review of the Corsair Hydro Series H100 today for those of you interested. For comparison purposes, you can see our evolution of the H100 here.

The radiator is the same size a standard 240mm form factor and is constructed from aluminum instead of copper. Why aluminum? It sheds heat faster than copper and is lighter to boot. That brings up some concerns about galvanic corrosion between the aluminum radiator and copper coldplate, but Corsair and its partner CoolIT use a proprietary coolant mixture that prohibits algae growth and inhibits corrosion. If it is still a concern, the five year warranty on the H100 should pretty much close that gap. In five years it will be upgrade time with new hardware and new cooling designs anyhow.

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Why aluminum? It sheds heat faster than copper and is lighter to boot.

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WTF? Stupid much?

Enough with these Corsair H80/H100 review news posts.

Bojamijams said:

WTF? Stupid much?

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Yeah, OMFG, pretty huge mistake from a website entitled "overclocker's club"

Aluminum is inferior to copper in every way except heat... And the potential for corrosion is abysmal unless some very drastic steps are taken, such as isolating the radiator from case ground (a battery discharges much slower when it's poles aren't electrically connected) through nylon screws and washers.

The [H] evolved the H100?


Impressive

Arcygenical said:

Aluminum is inferior to copper in every way except heat... And the potential for corrosion is abysmal unless some very drastic steps are taken, such as isolating the radiator from case ground (a battery discharges much slower when it's poles aren't electrically connected) through nylon screws and washers.

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Except that copper is 62% more thermally conductive than aluminum and they can be nickel plated to stop corrosion.

Arcygenical said:

Aluminum is inferior to copper in every way except heat...

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I think you are saying the opposite of what you are trying to say.

Copper would be the more effective metal at dissipating heat.

I can think of five reasons why they might prefer Aluminum to copper though...

1.) Aluminum is cheaper

2.) Aluminum is lighter

3.) Thin copper fins are more likely to bend/deform/break than aluminum ones

4.) Copper corrodes more easily

5.) Cuprous oxide is a known irritant/poison. (they'd rather not be sued if your pet gerbil licked their product and was poisoned )

It does introduce the issue of galvanic corrosion though. They claim to have a additive that helps mitigate this, but I am a skeptic. Everything I read suggests such additives:

1.) Aren't very effective, and really only slow down the inevitable

2.) reduce the effectiveness of the loop.

The best way to reduce galvanic corrosion would be to run distilled water (which they probably do) but even in a sealed system, I would imagine that the coolant picks up ionic content and becomes conductive over time...

Best way to reduce galvanic corrosion would be to NOT mix metals.. which they're doing so distilled water on its own would only facilitate that, hence why they need to use thermally robbing coolant

Bojamijams said:

Best way to reduce galvanic corrosion would be to NOT mix metals.. which they're doing so distilled water on its own would only facilitate that, hence why they need to use thermally robbing coolant

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If your fluid is non-conductive (like distilled water is) you can not have galvanic corrosion.

The problem is that water easily picks up new ions and becomes conductive over time.

That's why they need to use some sort of additive, that only delays the problem.

I request even more color bar graphs in reviews. This way I still won't be able read a god damned thing.

bbvdd2 said:

I request even more color bar graphs in reviews. This way I still won't be able read a god damned thing.

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The more I read about self contained liquid coolers, the more I am amazed at my Noctua NH-D14. By all rights even the best air cooler should be beaten silly by liquid coolers but that's emphatically not the case in every review I've ever read. So what's the point of the pump and the Subaru Justy rad? I'll keep my NH-D14, ugly flesh colored fans and all!

Weeth said:

The more I read about self contained liquid coolers, the more I am amazed at my Noctua NH-D14. By all rights even the best air cooler should be beaten silly by liquid coolers but that's emphatically not the case in every review I've ever read. So what's the point of the pump and the Subaru Justy rad? I'll keep my NH-D14, ugly flesh colored fans and all!

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As I understand it an air cooler of the same fin surface area is always going to be more efficient than a water cooling system.

With a water cooler your heat has to cross more barriers (chip -> paste -> metal -> water -> metal -> air ) as opposed to (chip -> paste -> metal -> air ) in an air cooler.

Not to mention, pumps add heat to the process.

So all else being equal, a straight air cooler should win.

The thing is, all else is rarely equal.

Firstly, there isn't always enough space to give an air cooler as much surface area as you want ( though the Thermaltake Macho HR-02 gets a lot of cooler in there).

Water coolers - on the other hand - are only really limited by the space you have to mount a radiator. It doesn't need to be in direct contact with the socket.

What really matters is a combination of fin density (to allow the air to flow through) and fin surface area (to allow as much contact surface with the cooler air as possible).

If you think of it this way, your Noctua probably has more surface area than most of the enclosed 120mm single radiators, which is why it performs better.

The enclosed water coolers do have an advantage though, in that they can suck cool outside air onto the radiator instead of warm case air thus resulting in lower CPU temps (or blowing hot CPU air outside the case if you prefer to keep the case as cool as possible for GPU overclocking).

This helps them perform a little better.

The enclosed water coolers have really only become competitive with the top end air coolers now that they have become really large (like my 180mm square radiator, or the Corsair H100 dual 120mm square radiator). This way they are making up for their inherent heat flow disadvantage by having much more fin surface area.

Weeth said:

The more I read about self contained liquid coolers, the more I am amazed at my Noctua NH-D14. By all rights even the best air cooler should be beaten silly by liquid coolers but that's emphatically not the case in every review I've ever read. So what's the point of the pump and the Subaru Justy rad? I'll keep my NH-D14, ugly flesh colored fans and all!

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I would like to put another 8GB in my machine soon. These huge air coolers block the RAM slots near the CPU socket. So your air cooler becomes a liability.

Eisenblut said:

I would like to put another 8GB in my machine soon. These huge air coolers block the RAM slots near the CPU socket. So your air cooler becomes a liability.

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That depends on a few different things.

1.) Size of the base of the cooler (some are better than others)

2.) How tall your ram is. Some low profile stuff fits nicely. Some of the ram with the ridiculously tall ramsinks does not.

3.) Your platform. Intel motherboards seem to suffer from this problem A LOT less than AMD boards. it probably has something to do with the electrical specifications for the traces going from the ram controller in the CPU to the RAM itself.

Zarathustra[H];1037761570 said:

(snip)The enclosed water coolers do have an advantage though, in that they can suck cool outside air onto the radiator instead of warm case air thus resulting in lower CPU temps (or blowing hot CPU air outside the case if you prefer to keep the case as cool as possible for GPU overclocking). (snip)

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Aha! So that's where the custom case I'm building is going to take that NH-D14 to new heights (or lows.. in temp). I hate the look of that case as much as any other enthusiast with working eyeballs, but I just got an Xclio A380 that I'm heavily modifying specifically for the airflow. I'm taking the entire HD tray assembly out, and running a conduit from the 250mm front fan right into the intake end fins of the Noctua. There's going to be another conduit taking the air right out of the case which will keep the rest of the stuff in there (especially my passive Gigabyte GV-R677SL-1GD HD6770) nice and cool even though I've taken that ridiculously protruding side fan off. I'm only mildly OCing whatever CPU I end up getting, but I'm pretty sure that the setup will outperform any other NH-D14 in a sealed case!