Corsair H100 Dual 120mm Radiator CPU Liquid Cooler Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,953 words · ~9 min read
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by popular demand this is my unboxing of
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the Corsair h100 so this is I can tell you already
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this is going to be one of if not the highest performance pre-filled
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pre-sealed water cooling kits available on the market and Corsair actually this
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this blew me away they do not do themselves jce at all with the numbers
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that they're giving on the back of the box here so uh you know what I'll get
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into those a little bit more after why don't I talk about what this product is
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exactly so we're all familiar with the H50 the
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h60 uh the H is there any there's an HD
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h70 the h80 so these are all Corsair's
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uh pre-filled liquid cooling solutions that are maintenance free so it means
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you never have to fill it with water they are high performance they're also
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light weight that's one of the advantages of these pre-filled liquid cooling systems versus a heat sink
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because you can strap the huge heavy part of it the radiator to your chassis
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instead of strapping it directly to your CPU socket which makes them more
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shipping friendly it also means that you can carry the heat away from the CPU
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much more efficiently and exhaust the heat directly out of your case rather
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than exhausting it from the CPU socket area to the air around the CPU socket
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area you can just kick it right out so General advantages of these water cooled
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system systems are many they are fairly expensive but they do have the
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performance to back it up so let's see what corser has to say for themselves on
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the packaging here corser link Digital support is supported by the h100
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so uh you can be in complete control of your cooling monitor a wide range of
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parameters including pump speed coolant temperature and fan speed and customize
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your own performance profiles requires the cors our link Commander which is
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sold separately so there you go uh you will have to get the commander if you
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want to take advantage of that particular functionality all right Box contents we'll get into
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that when we open it up so don't worry too much about that CPU compatibility is
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pretty much everything on the market right now 775
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1155 and 1156 same same mounting holes
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1366 am2 and am3 uh remember am2 and am3
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um are also am2 plus and am3 plus in terms of heat sync compatibility cooling
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performance for the most demanding systems this is True Performance times two see this is actually probably more
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accurate than what they're saying over here control at your fingertip the
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integrated pump and cool plate includes push button control so you can select the fan speed and cooling performance
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setup that best suits your needs white LED display lets you know to glance
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which profile is being used so let's have a look at this all right h100
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they're saying is going to be good for 66.5 de C okay and they're saying the
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h80 is at 68.2 De C let me tell you what
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is wrong with this picture the h100 just by Merit of being a dual
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radiator has far more usable surface
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area for cooling than something like an h80 even though it uses a double thick
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rad the reason that that test is so
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flawed is that Corsair is only clocking
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that CPU that core i7 CPU actually here
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let me get all the stuff out of the box here first and then I'm going to go back
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I'm going to show you that chart again they're only clocking that 1366 core i7
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CPU at 3.8 GHz that means they're not
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really dumping a whole lot of voltage into it now at 66.5 degrees
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you still have room to put More Voltage into that CPU I would say you should be
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able to get a significantly better overclock out of the h100 than either of
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these other coolers and the reason is that as soon as you increase the heat
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load that you are putting on the cooler a better cooler will start to distance
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itself far more from an inferior one versus if you have a heat load that's
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much smaller so if you were to take a stock CPU and show this graph I'm
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willing to bet all the water cooling solutions would be about equal but but
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as soon as you start to overclock the CPU more overvolt it more and dump in
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more heat you're going to see dramatically better performance from any
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cooler that either has faster fans or
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more surface area that is what all cooling comes down to surface area and
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air flow all right so let's look at the at the radiator unit itself in a moment
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and let's start with the documentation so first thing here is we've got the
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parts list of everything that's included as well as uh picture instructions of
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how to mount the CPU block very nice
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okay stop do not return this product to the store very nice little Solutions
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guide 2010 oops guys it's 2011 now that's okay
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um mounting hardware we find Ting
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billion in one screws in here so those are going to help you mount it to
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whatever socket it is that you need to mount it to we've got an Intel back
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plate here okay so you can see these are adjustable for all the different sockets
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you might need to mount it to and then we have the AMD hold down Hardware
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here all right included fans I'm not oh
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o These are nice okay I was about to say I'm not a big fan of the fans that are
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included with the uh with the Corsair water cooling solutions typically but I
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have not yet unboxed the uh the h60 or
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the h100 which are the new uh kolet ones the kolet designed ones so this as far
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as I can tell is just a Corsair sticker over what appears to be the same fan
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that kolit used to use I can I'm just
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I'm guessing here because the frame overall has very little Flex in it it
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feels like a much better constructed fan than the ones that I've seen included on
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previous corsera liquid cooling systems this is a very encouraging step in the
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right direction and as we've come to expect from Corsair it's got nice black
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cables on it which means it's going to look slick in your system all right so
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let's look at the H itself we have
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power as well as an RPM monitor so you
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are going to need to plug these both in separately but you can separate them out
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further if you need to Route them to separate parts of the case so and they
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are black so you should be able to hide them fairly easily in any Enthusiast
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looking system we've also got and this is related to the uh uh the separate fan
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control that it does allow with the commander software we've also got other fan headers so we've got one four pin 2
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four pin three four four pin pwm fan headers on the side of the CPU block
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pump unit itself on this side we've also got a little proprietary plug right
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there and then on the other side we have nothing except for the um rotating hose
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fittings right there so what that allows you to do is wherever you've got this
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radiator mounted in your case most cases are going to use this as a top mounted
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rad you will be able to have flexibility
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on the CPU block depending where your socket is located and you're not going
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to put undue tension on the hosing itself which is 1/4 in and it is a
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corrugated tough plastic that will allow reasonable flexibility but don't overdo
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it because if you kink it there is a potential you could damage it all right
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the block itself has thermal compound
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pre-applied now I know for a fact this is a very high quality thermal compound
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you actually won't get much benefit from replacing it with an aftermarket one
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however once you've mounted it once and taken it off you will have to take this
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off and reapply thermal compound again
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okay just an FYI for you guys now let's have a look at the radiator itself so
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this is a fairly typical uh thickness for a radiator it's a touch thinner than
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something from a hardware Labs um but it's about I I'd say it's actually yeah
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it's thinner than something from swifttech as well but just by Merit of
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how large it is so let's hold up the 120 mm fan for comparison so this is a dual
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12 mil rad you will get excellent performance out of it as soon as you
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start dumping more heat into it so you can see actually you know what why don't
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we do the iPhone comparison just so you guys can see this now I'm not going to
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expect you to be able to eyeball whether this is going to fit in your case or not
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just based on my video what you will need to do is do a little bit of
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research now I'm going to tell you there's a few cases that it'll fit in no
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problem it'll fit in the 800d um it'll fit in actually here maybe
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crazy Russian knows if does it fit in the 650d yeah he says it fits in the
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650d so anything that supports dual 120
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Ms in the top has adequate spacing
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remember not just for the radiator but
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also for the fan has clearance for the
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barbs to come out and has the correct spacing for the
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120 mm fan mounts some cases actually
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have dual 120 mm fans but they're spaced
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out so what that means is that when you
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go to mount your fans on here and then bolt your fans to the case you can see
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Corsair uses a standard spacing which means that there's no gap between the
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fans if your case has them like this
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then it's not going to be natively supported and you may have to do some modding in order to make it fit okay
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guys I think that's pretty much all that there is to say now I do want to do some
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performance evaluation of this unit just to back up the claims that I'm making
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about how it's going to perform very very well but I think that covers
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everything I wanted to do with this un boxing thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Corsair h100 don't
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forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos and one more thing sorry
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I'm going to do this before I cut the end of the video uh this button right
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here is the one that allows you to see which profile you are using while the
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device is turned on and it does have a white LED display or not display it has
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a white LED backl behind it