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Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU Water-Cooling Kit Review

Cooling/Water Cooling by leeghoofd @ 2009-08-02

*Updated with AMD Phenom Temp Results* Corsair gets their feet wet again, after close to 3 years they have introduced another water cooling product, the previous one being the Nautilus 500 back in 2006. This time around they’ve also opted for an all-in-one kit, but build inside the case, fitted onto the exhaust fan, a case with 120mm exhaust is a requirement, a large wallet is not! The Corsair H50 will be introduced at price of ~€/$70 which is pretty much on par with high end air cooled heatsinks out there! So can an all-in-one kit impress us? Let´s find out!

Test Setup and Test Methodology

Test Setup and Test Methodology

Testing will be done on the 2 Intel platforms. For the Socket 775 I got my E7400 which is already quite a challenge for an air cooler. Socket 1366 will be done on the Core i7 950 CPU. Even though Corsair has got a booklet included how to approach the testing I prefer to do it like I always did it before, namely using prime custom test 20K. First a 15 minute idle warm-up of the rig, verifying the ambient temperature and then launch Prime test for an hour. Monitoring is done via Everest home and Realtemp software. Both programs allow logging so it makes my life way easier then before...

Eventually Core i5 tests will be for a later date if time allows (NDA guys sory)

On with the show:

Leeghoofd's E7400 Test Setup



CPU	Intel E7400 @ 4 1.35v
Cooling	Thermalright Ultra-120 + 1600rpm fan Corsair H50 with mods
Mainboard	Gigabyte EP45 UD3P
Memory	4Gb OCZ PC8500 Reapers
PSU	OCZ ModStream 700W

Leeghoofd's I7 950 Test Setup



CPU	Intel I7 950 @ 3.8 1.20v HT ON
Cooling	Thermalright Ultra-120 + 1600rpm fan Corsair H50 with mods
Mainboard	Asus Rampage Extreme II
Memory	6Gb Corsair Dominator PC12800 C8-8-8-24 1T
PSU	Enermax Galaxy DXX 1Kw

The E7400 getting readied to be cooled by the H50 unit. Do not tighten the screws too much at first, I just made them grasp the thread of the back plate, then slide in the pump/cooling unit, turn it and then tighten the screws properly.

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The back plate has got a cutout for those motherboards with chips on the backside of the CPU socket.

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Everything in position, almost ready to be fired up. Follow the booklet carefully. Make sure you hook up the radiator fan to the motherboard’s CPU fan header. This allows the bios to adjust the fan speed depending on the CPU temp. Of course the pump can be hooked up to any other header of preference, but why not use the auto-fan speed control if you have it available?

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A bios screen ; CPU fan speed is the radiators' fan speed. At idle the fan spins around the 1000rpm mark, once more performance is required it quickly spins up to 1650rpm. Fan header 1 is the pump which was running around 1400rpm all the time. This also allows you to monitor and set an alarm if either fan or pump fails to prevent overheating!

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Case closed, ready to rumble!

Comment from Jaco @ 2009/07/28

What type of cooling fluid is used ?
I know the waterblock is copper , but the radiator is aluminium.

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2009/07/28

I think the fluid mixture itself is top secret... I tried to refill the unit and it didn't even take 70cc to fill her up, it's pretty impossible to get it done properly, unit still mixed loads of air and is in fact wasted... will let her run ( without no cpu to see what happens with the fluid )

Comment from 2Cb @ 2010/04/24

Hey Leeghoofd,

Which is the best push pull setup for this cooler in your experience? Having the push fan blowing air into the case or out of the case (assuming the case airflow is adapted correctly)?

Thanks

Comment from jmke @ 2010/04/24

Quote:

Having the push fan blowing air into the case or out of the case

if your case is located in a "hot" area at the rear, closed environment or inside a PC furniture, you might get better results by placing a good in-take fan at the front and having the push/pull setup blow air outside the case.
if however you can get fresh air at the rear of the case, having the fans pull in cool air will give you the advantage

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2010/04/25

Indeed much depends on the way the rig is setup, case ventilation etc...

I never got the acclaimed 10 °C difference with the TRUE, I even tried theunit outside of the case, temps stayed +/- the same.

For max performance : sucking air in via the rear hole as advised by Corsair, but for max ventilation it would require to add a top fan to get rid of the trapped hot air in the case

There's a cool thread on Overclock.net, there are zillions of mods that make the unit even better :

Official Corsair H50 hydro series owners

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