Reviews - Corsair Hydro Series H105

[HEXUS]

Does bigger mean better for Corsair's 240mm Hydro Series cooler?

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[minicale]

I just got a h105 for my new 4670k and it runs at 25 idle with my two sp120 quiet editions running at full rpm and 50C at load after a hours or so of bf4.

[Roobubba]

I've been rocking a Prolimatech Megahalems on my now-ageing Lynnfield i7 860 (@3.8GHz). I'll be upgrading CPU/Mobo/RAM over the next few months, maybe Intel's recent announcement will keep me waiting for the new chips, but I'm always interested in how the air coolers compare to these all-in-one water cooling systems (I'm not about to set up real water cooling).

It strikes me that a good air cooler is still the way to go: not only can you get about the same performance for a lot less money and noise, but if you wanted to better the performance, you probably could by slapping on some stupid fans (making your air cooling set up maybe as noisy but still cheaper than the AIO water loop).

I want to like this, I really do. However, short of a real water setup, which is undeniably going to be better, I just don't see the point in moving away from air cooling!

[Popeye46]

I've been rocking a Prolimatech Megahalems on my now-ageing Lynnfield i7 860 (@3.8GHz). I'll be upgrading CPU/Mobo/RAM over the next few months, maybe Intel's recent announcement will keep me waiting for the new chips, but I'm always interested in how the air coolers compare to these all-in-one water cooling systems (I'm not about to set up real water cooling).

It strikes me that a good air cooler is still the way to go: not only can you get about the same performance for a lot less money and noise, but if you wanted to better the performance, you probably could by slapping on some stupid fans (making your air cooling set up maybe as noisy but still cheaper than the AIO water loop).

I want to like this, I really do. However, short of a real water setup, which is undeniably going to be better, I just don't see the point in moving away from air cooling!

You don't need to go full-on.water cool everything, i'm using a Corsair H60 just for my CPU i don't watercool anything else, i leave that to the fans in my CM Storm Trooper case to cool everything else and it works a treat. If i was to upgrade anything "NOW" i would buy the H105 as it would futureproof my case for around 1-2 yrs to come.

[Tunnah]

Rocking a Noctua NH-D14 with only 1 fan (I er..broke the second by accident when drunk ) and my CPU barely touches 48c under load, 34-36c idle, so I just never understand the point in these ones. It seems air coolers do a bang up job as it is, for the tiddly bit better performance it doesn't seem worth it to add more moving parts that could break.

[John P. Myers]

I like how this cooler wasn't compared to anything that would beat it at the same price point or less. Shame on you guys.

[DemonHighwayman]

The thing with aircoolers is that to get similar performance to to this it needs to be pretty big. Not all cases allow enough room for big air coolers, I know i'm limited using my cosmos s which is a full sized pc case ! So either a proper water cooling loop (which I used to have) or an 'all in one' is the way to go for decent cooling.

Unfortunately at the moment I just have a coolermaster hyper tx3 evo which although small keeps my overclocked AMD 1100T fairly cool (3.8-4.0Ghz) - 32 idle/54 full load.

Most reviews for this cooler say it has admirable performance and I plan to buy one or two for my next build in a prodigy.

[Attila the Bun]

As this cooler is supposed to be an "upgrade" to the H100i I would have expected it to have been in the review?

[DemonHighwayman]

As this cooler is supposed to be an "upgrade" to the H100i I would have expected it to have been in the review?

It seems to run slightly warmer than the H100i for LGA1155 and cooler for LGA2011.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cooling/2014/02/07/corsair-h105-review/2