Corsair H-50 Cooler Saving the World From the Zombie Apocalypse

[aigomorla]

Meh... okey I apologize, to corsair.

However, i think a specialized water tester should get a sample. At least so we can see where entry level kits like this stand amongst the enthusiast setups.

 

[skinnee]

<start OT>

Originally posted by: AmberClad
Edit: Er, speaking of skinnee...

Welcome to AT 😀, looking to forward to the T3 review (I thought it was going to be posted today?).

Thanks for the welcome, I usually just lurk over here. I'm bummed I can't use my avatar though. 🙁

I don't want to OT the thread, but the T3 review is at the copy editor. Something new I am trying in order to start hitting the radar of companies like Corsair.

<end OT>

 

[Rubycon]

What's the life expectancy of the unit? Since one cannot open it up and inspect wetted parts, perform eddie current testing (just kidding!), etc...

1 year before time to replace it? What about the pump noise?

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: zagood

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: Zap

But could your design have a street price of $70 and still be profitable for the manufacturer as well as the reseller?

yes its called a lapped true with Sflex fan. :X

I hate to jump in on this point, but for an "off the shelf" solution, stores are charging around $20 to lap a TRUE. So, going off the cheapest prices, let's say $50 for the cooler, $20 for the lapping service, and $13 for the fan. Plus lapping the CPU to get full benefit.

For people who would build their own WC, lap their heatsink, use oversized fans, sleeve cables, etc. you can probably do better for the price, just like building your own computer from the ground up you can get better performance for the same you would spend on, say, a dell. But for non-enthusiasts the H-50 looks like a great price/performance solution.

My issue would be what maintenance will be like for a unit running for a year+ 24/7. If these are meant for the non-enthusiast (or lazy pseudo-enthusiast) then that may be an issue.

-z

Dude, a lapping service? Last time I checked, lapping a CPU takes an afternoon, not a $20 payment.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
What's the life expectancy of the unit? Since one cannot open it up and inspect wetted parts, perform eddie current testing (just kidding!), etc...

1 year before time to replace it? What about the pump noise?

They warranty it for 2 years, so read into that what you will 😉. I wonder what the first point of failure would be though, evaporation or the integrated pump failing.

By contrast:
RAM = lifetime warranty
PSUs = 5 year warranty (maybe just the two I have? it might not apply to their budget line)

Not that Swiftech is all that impressive either. I think theirs is 1 year.

 

[Beanie46]

Just read this thread and I must agree with Zap, Gilbot, and skinnee. This kit is for complete WC'ing newbs that are intrigued with watercooling but are overwhelmed and confused by the sheer variety of options the individual pieces present.....radiators, cpu blocks, tubing, pumps....and the list goes on. For someone like that, this kit fits quite nicely.

I entered the watercooling market several years ago, having read about it for quite a while and wanted to try it, but was unsure how to go about it for the first go round. I ended up settling on the Corsair Nautilus system. Why? Simple setup, all-in-one out of the box experience, and by a brand I trusted (I pretty much use only two brands of memory, and neither have OCZ anywhere in them.......let's see, Corsair---no OCZ there.....Mushkin---nope, no OCZ there, either. 😉 )

After setting up the Nautilus, and it was quite painless, I had a very positive experience with it. Of course, within 3 months, the radiator had been replaced with a Black Ice Stealth (I'd have used a Swiftech MCR120, but this was when the 120 had fixed 3/8" barbs and they were too tall to fit inside the Nautilus's box.) I then upgraded the cpu block with a Swiftech GT.

Since then, I've assembled my own loops and currently have a simple cpu loop--an i7 920 under water using an HK 3.0 cpu block with a TC 120.3 rad and S-Flex fans, a DDC2 pump with XSPC top, and Primochill LRT tubing. But if it were not for the initial positive experience I had with the Corsair Nautilus, the ease with which it went together, I may not have gained the confidence to begin to grow in the WC'ing hobby.

I'm not saying the Nautilus, nor the new Corsair unit, are the best performing units in watercooling, but for the target audience, complete and utter newbs to watercooling but with an itch to get into it, albeit with as little drama as possible, Corsair continues to fit the bill completely. And that's the whole point of systems like the Corsair units.....to provide quality cooling and drama-free entry into watercooling.....not to give the outright best watercooling performance out there. They're leaving that to the other manufacturers to provide the equipment for and the forums like here and on XS populated with experienced hobbyists to provide the guidance.


As for why a lapping service? It may be as simple as the individual is unsure how to do it properly and would rather pay someone else to do the job correctly.....I know that if I paid someone $20 to lap a TRUE, I'd darned well expect it to be done right or they'd do it over. Or it may be the person just wants it done when they open the box...just install without getting the "pleasure" of a half-hour's worth of work and getting their hands dirty.

 

[aigomorla]

LOL u cant change parts on this unit beanie.

Thats why i was really sad to see them go away from the nautilus design.

I actually like the nautilius minus its one flaw of an alu radiator.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
However, i think a specialized water tester should get a sample. At least so we can see where entry level kits like this stand amongst the enthusiast setups.

I approve of this. :thumbsup: 😀

The 'beards probably expected this kind of reception from the enthusiast crowd... at least I hope they did. BFG gets a similar reception from the enthusiast crowd for Phobos. It's like trying to market TV dinners to chefs. They (chefs/enthusiasts) just don't get it. Okay, that's probably not true. They probably do get it, but refuse, refuse to admit that there are those who don't think/want exactly the same thing. 😉 We're all fanboys to some extent (and I include myself in the "we").

 

[zagood]

Originally posted by: videogames101
Dude, a lapping service? Last time I checked, lapping a CPU takes an afternoon, not a $20 payment.

Originally posted by: Zap
It's like trying to market TV dinners to chefs. They (chefs/enthusiasts) just don't get it.

 

[God Mode]

This looks to be about perfect for a microatx build. A TRUE or pretty much any 120mm tower sink wont fit in the case I have in mind while still utilizing the side fan.

I'm wondering if putting the h50's rad/fan on my cases rear 120mm exhaust would increase the ambient temps of everything else besides the cpu.

I would also like to see a respected independent tester compare the unit to the TRUE with 1-2000rpm fans cooling quads. Dual core testing is obsolete to me and the regular review sites mean nothing to me. They repeatedly leave out negative issues in reviews and praise the positive.

Either way, even if it performs a bit worse than a TRUE lapped or not, it would be perfect for those working with small systems as I cant think of any other alternative for such other than using a bottom blowing 120mm sink or a 92mm tower style.

 

[Rubycon]

In SFF cases wouldn't this turn the little case into a sweatbox? Corsair recommends pulling ambient air through the radiator and INTO the case! Even with the fan blowing out the inside case temps of SFFs are quite toasty so CPU temps just shoot for the stars. This hinders oc so we're back to square one.

Nobody has still addressed the noise of the damn pump!

 

[Gillbot]

Originally posted by: skinnee
First thing I want to comment on is the mud slinging about review sites. I've been following the threads and reviews from XS, Hexus and MadShrimps. What you're seeing with mixed results depending on the site is not because someone received a unit for free then juiced the numbers in order to keep a sponsorship or connection, but the variance in test benches. Cross comparing benches is a bad, bad thing to do. I can't speak for other sites, but the amount of time and money I have invested in my site is mind boggling. Yes, I receive product samples and prototypes to test...I then spend a ton of time testing and reviewing those products, my payment for time is the sample/prototype...which turns out to be a lot less per hour than working at McDonalds. So please, if you're going to sling mud at a review site just understand the amount of work and effort that goes on behind the scenes.

I never meant to "mud sling" if that comment was directed at me. I merely stated my skepticizm since MY HISTORY in hardware reviews has shown the tendency for reviewers to omit certain negatives in a review to keep the product in a good light. I never meant to imply that they directly skew results. I have seen cases where they just leave out certain negatives about a product or compare them to items that one wouldn't normally compare them to. Hell, I saw one review site compare the Aquagate 80 Mini cooler setup to a fanless heatsink. Of course the Aquagate could beat a "passive" heatsink in a cooling contest. Their justification was that they were comparing "silent" cooling solutions and they became very defensive when asked why they didn't use the silent fan included with the "passive" heatsink.

 

[manimal]

Great read! I have skimmed the few reviews for this thing and the really the unanswered question I have is is how silent is this thing. If it was VERY quiet and was rated to run 25K hours + I would seriously consider these for my 5 htpcs in the house. The bedroom unit has to be powered down after use because of noise. I run a mini ninja in that and its still too loud for my wife's tastes. The funny thing is she likes to sleep with a wave machine for ambient noise but the quiality of the ambient noise the pc's case fans running at low rpm makes drives her crazy. The reviews were all run with the pump running full bore unless I am mistaken. Whats idle and light load noise compared to low profile options out there heatsink wise.
If this cooler is reliable-time will tell- and performs quietly the htpc crowd would surely take notice.

Props to corsair for coming in and contributing!

 

[aigomorla]

the noise on this unit will be determined by the pump + fan + how well the system is bleed.

Since its prepackaged, the system should be fully bleed, which means the pump will be quiet.

Your hard drives should put out more noise then the pump at this point unless your system wasnt bleed.

The determining factor would be what fan u used on the radiator.

For fans i categorize them this way.

Sub 1100RPM = Low spin... usually very quiet...
1100-1600 - > Medium spin... u get a trade of for both.
1600+ -> high spin the loudest. However noise might be subjective on how loud, loud really is.

 

[Zap]

Another review:

guru3d

It gets beat by three coolers (though one has "Liquid" in the name). It also handily beats the CoolIt Domino. 😱

Of course this was installed based on the recommended fan as an intake, which will of course make for lower temperatures but will IMO screw up airflow in normal cases.

I'd like to see such testing done with the fan as an exhaust.

 

[Gillbot]

I'd love to test one out and give my opinion **AHEM CORSAIR**

 

[fluffmonster]

I have no particular interest in water cooling, but I am interested in this. First though, I'd want to know a lot more about how noisy it is.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Would be nice to have some sort of mechanism that can tell if the pump has failed or not.

 

[aigomorla]

does the pump look like a 3 prong or a 2 prong?

If its 3 prong, i think the pump has a rpm sensor.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I watched the video, and to me, it seemed rigged. I've run C2D dual-cores and quad-cores at up to TJMax (100C, usually), and they don't blue-screen.
So something else was up with the rig.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Well, I watched the video, and to me, it seemed rigged. I've run C2D dual-cores and quad-cores at up to TJMax (100C, usually), and they don't blue-screen.
So something else was up with the rig.

BSOD can occur any time with i7 o/c due to insufficient VCORE, QPI voltage OR too HIGH a temperature at the given VCORE. Problem when that happens increasing the VCORE higher just pushes the temp even higher. (time to get a better cooler)

 

[theprodigalrebel]

bit-tech has it beating the CoolIT Domino, Titan Fenrir and TRUE on a Core i7-965 EE (3.6GHz @ 1.3V) by 4/6/7 degrees respectively (Domino and Fenrir both running at full speed).

But things get iffy on page 5 when they move from a CM Stacker 830 to a CM Cosmos 1000 while testing it on an AMD setup. There, it actually loses to the AMD stock cooler. :shocked:

The AMD results may seem like a bit on the high side but we tested, and retested, and remounted, and checked and changed the pump and fan connectors, but the results were entirely consistent. The problem is that the Cosmos 1000 lacks any intake fans, it only has teo 120mm exhaust fans in the roof and a 120mm exhaust fan in the above the I/O shield. As a result, even when we set the Corsair H50 to draw air in from outside the case the system ran very hot.

It's a worrying trend that pairing a case without positive pressure or a ready route for air to escape through a mesh means performance suffers massively. After the CPU had been under load for an hour the motherboard around the CPU socket was to hot it wasn't comfortable to touch, while the CPU block was also very hot. Worse still, the air temperature inside the case was in excess of 45C. Relatively this makes it worse than the stock AMD cooler - i.e. clearly very, very poor.

Clearly with a normal heatsink the two roof fans draw off the heat right out the case, leading to better performance, but with the radiator on the H50 limiting airflow, it really makes the whole setup struggle. Evidently the H50 isn't suitable for use in every case.

I guess with the right case, this would indeed be one heck of a good product. Me, I would probably just go for a $40 Xigmatek HDT-S1284EE (fan included).

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
bit-tech has it beating the CoolIT Domino, Titan Fenrir and TRUE on a Core i7-965 EE (3.6GHz @ 1.3V) by 4/6/7 degrees respectively (Domino and Fenrir both running at full speed).

The Corsair gets the best performance either as an intake (as in it is only getting cool air) or with two fans in the Bit-Tech article. With a single fan as an exhaust, it was outperformed by the CoolIt on full, and nearly a tie with the CoolIt on Auto (Bit-Tech says "medium" but IIRC it is "Auto"). I'm sure if you flipped around the CoolIt fan so that it sucks in cold air, it would perform better as well. Heck, you can even do that with air coolers. The Thermalright HR01 came with an accordian-style duct to go to an exhaust fan. I'm sure it would be trivial to test performance in a normal scenario, and then test again with fans flipped to see how much of a temperature drop you get with external air.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: Rubycon
What's the life expectancy of the unit? Since one cannot open it up and inspect wetted parts, perform eddie current testing (just kidding!), etc...

1 year before time to replace it? What about the pump noise?

They warranty it for 2 years, so read into that what you will 😉. I wonder what the first point of failure would be though, evaporation or the integrated pump failing.

By contrast:
RAM = lifetime warranty
PSUs = 5 year warranty (maybe just the two I have? it might not apply to their budget line)

Not that Swiftech is all that impressive either. I think theirs is 1 year.

These were my concerns. This device will probably die way sooner than a similarly priced, similarly performing air cooling solution. It is not something I could buy, install, and leave in the computer as is for 5 years.