INTEL Test System:

Since Corsair was so kind to sent us not one but two units, I pulled some strings and ended up with the Hydrocool on my desk. Once again, I used the PIV 2.26 because I already have some test results with it, running on air and water cooled. Testing was done as usual, a run during 1 hour using HotCPU to stress the poor thing...

I don't need to start explaining what's in the box all over again so just a little comment about installing the water block. As far as I'm concerned, Corsair reinvented water cooling here! My rig was setup with the stock Intel cooler, and all I needed to do was remove the fan and heatsink, clean the CPU, apply the thermal paste and mount the block! No need to disassemble half your system here!





So on with the test results now. The first graph shows you the test results for the CPU running @ stock speed.



There's good news and very good news here; idle temperature is on par, but what's more important is a 2 degrees Celsius gain while stressed compared to the Koolance. Remember: Lower = better ;-)



For the next run, I upped the CPU speed to 2.72Ghz and started up HotCPU again...



And the Hydrocool scores again: idling temperature is 1 degree lower while the stressed temperature drops 2 degrees below the Koolance.

One final test I did: upping the CPU speed as high as possible while still having a stable system, giving me 3Ghz pure Intel power with 1.62v core voltage.



Not bad for an out-of-the-box system hey! 48°C after running half an hour at 100% load and water temperature never passed 28.5 °C, I didn't even bother pushing the "turbo" button!

In the last graph for this review, I compared my personal water cooling setup (check this review for more details) , assembled out of quite good components and cooling cpu, gpu & northbridge with the Hydrocool. A 3°c difference in favor of my personal setup isn't that big, although the custom setup is virtually silent and the Hydrocool isn't.



I did some tests with the Hydrocool fan running in "turbo" mode, but the gain is hardly worth mentioning, @ 100% CPU usage the maximum CPU temperature dropped 1° to 42° C. Corsair could save a few bucks here dropping the turbo switch and light from the unit. The performance gain isn't worth the extra amount of noise that accompanies it!

Onto our conclusion…