Keeps my Q9550 idling at 36 degrees C and I'm hitting 60 C under sustained full load using Prime95. Vcore is set to 1.38 volts and with a 482 mhz FSB x 8.5 multiplier I'm running at a rounded 4.1 Ghz. Using my old Zalman copper air cooler I would hit about 85 degrees C running Prime95 at 3.6 Ghz and 1.3 volts so this is a huge improvement.
The instructions in my box were not the best and could very much be improved upon for someone with little system building experience. I've been building my own for some time now so it was no big deal to have to remove the motherboard to get the back plate on and figure out how the mounting bracket works. Thermal grease supplied didn't seem like it was quite enough so I put a very thin coat on the CPU itself to ensure having even coverage. Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50 All in One High-performance CPU Cooler CWCH50-1
Great product for people who need high performance cooling in tight spaces such as MATX HTPC cases. Unit is also VERY QUIET!! Performance is equal or greater to a high end air cooler.
The Corsair H50 was installed into a nMediapc HTPC-8000 wooden case cooling an AMD Phenom II X4 955 overclocked (3.7ghz) processor.
I really wanted to like this product. Some reviews indicated difficulties with installation but I found the install went very smooth. The instructions could have been better but it was not difficult. Unfortunately, I encountered a couple major issues. The most significant was a pump failure. The cooler worked well for about the first 12 hours but then the pump failed and caused the CPU to overheat and shut-down. The second issue was the cooling effiency. When it was working, temps were about 5 to 6 degrees warmer than air cooling (compared to a Zalman 9900). On the positive side, it was extremely quiet!! I would easily have traded-off the cooling efficiency for the lower noise level, if only the pump had not failed. Based on other reviews, my experience appears to be unique and this is generally a good product but be aware that unlike an air cooler, when the pump fails, the CPU hits Tj max within seconds.
I'm using this cooler on an i7 chip in a gaming rig.. I mainly settled on the closed loop water cooler since I didn't want to fight a large air cooler that may or may not fit in my case. Overall, this device was easy to install and keeps my temperatures quite low, even during intense gaming.
For my own purposes, I replaced the stock thermal paste with Arctic Silver (I rarely trust manufacturer paste), but by the looks of the stock paste, it may have performed just as well and doesn't look like it is globbed on.
The only difficulty I had was that the tubes are quite rigid and due to the design being closed loop, are fixed length. Due to this, the orientation of the fan in my case almost put alot of pressure on the tubes, but nothing to cause a kink or difficulty.
Overall very impressed with its cooling capabilities, it really does outperform even the best air cooler i've used in the past, and the best part is it is very quiet vs the air coolers, and does not take up 2/3 of my case!
I bought this cooler at Microcenter. I am so happy with this choice that I could barely contain myself. I've been looking for a place to give this fantastic cooler it's credit. Amazon is a perfect review place, because many people come here for reviews. The Amazon price is about the same as microcenter, so you can certainly buy it here if you want.
I did not go shopping for a liquid cooler, but for a good air cooler. Luckily I saw this cooler all by itself at the end a row where someone had left it. I did not see it on the shelf. The salesman tried to talk me out of it, in a helpful way, and wanted details about my case to know if it would fit. I told him I didn't know the name of my case, but I knew it would fit, even if I had to drill and cut holes with a jig saw or dremel tool. I am not afraid of those things. If you are afraid of the drill, then you should be very careful with case choice. This cooler may not be for you.
Don't let the fact that it is water (or some mysterious liquid) bother you. It is sealed up tight, never to be opened, and dry as a bone. You will never see, feel, or sense, liquid, unless something goes wrong.
Before I started on this mission I really needed a new cooler. The problem was, was that my Core i7, at stock speeds, using the stock heat sink, reached almost 90 centigrade at full load. I was at full load using DVD fab to convert my DVD for my iphone. DVDFab uses all of the cores at full speed, and doesn't hold back at all. I can convert a DVD in about 8 minutes, which seems unimaginably fast to me. My old system would take hours. Stock temps were idling at 38 or so, Case temps 32-35. Once I saw those temps on my CPU, I shut down DVD fab and wondered what to do. Intel's stock stock cooler would barely keep their CPU safe at full speed. Most people who study this kind of thing will think that CPU temps above 70 are bad, and 80 will cook your CPU. I think 100 will auto shut off the CPU, as per intel specs.
On the back of the H50's box is a little graph. It looks like marketing fluff, so I didn't pay much attention to it. After installation I looked at it again, and the graph is remarkably accurate. It shows a standard CPU heat sink idling at 40C, and 85C at 100 percent load. It shows a "high performance air cooler" at 60C at load. And it shows this cooler a little less than 55C.
Well, my experience significantly outperforms this graph. At 100 percent load, stock speeds, I was getting temps about 45C. Overclocked to the crazy range? 4.1+ GHz, I was getting about 54C. All this time, it was whisper quiet. And I can feel the warm air coming out of the top.
On the web, some builders and reviewers have complained that the instructions are to blow the airflow into the case instead of out. they think it is backwards. They mistakenly think it blows hot air into the CPU. But the real point is to cool the CPU. So, to get the coolest air into the radiator, you should set it up to blow cool air (and therefore air external to the case) into the radiator. Case temps are 10-15 degrees warmer, and will significantly hamper the cooling of the CPU. So just follow directions and blow the air in instead of out. You will, therefore, have to engineer a way to get that hot air out of the case. I have a Thermaltake V3 case. The power supply blows air in at the back bottom, and there is two openings on the top for fans to blow up and out. So my case has air coming in at the back bottom, coming in at the back top for the radiator, and two fans blowing up out of the top. It is ideal for this cooler. I did need to drill a couple of extra holes for fan mounting screws, and I did need to mount the fan outside and attached to the radiator inside. The fan wire comes out a miscellaneus hole in the back of the case. With this adaptation, all my hot air comes out the top. Case temps as I type this are 30C. Room temp is about 24C.
Here is my case http://amzn.com/B002Q2M8KK . I did not need to take out the motherboard because this box has a special hole to get to the the back side of the CPU.
This is clearly the best cooler for the money, no question about it. It outperforms anything close to it in price, and it is barely audible. The two year warrantee is just icing on the cake. If you are a system builder, buy one. You won't be sorry. - Cooling - Corsair - Cpu Cooler - Cpu Coolers'
Detail Products
Detail Reviews
Click here for more information
