Corsair H70 vs CoolIT Vantage vs Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Cooler Comparison Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,104 words · ~5 min read
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all right so we have the Corsair h70 hooked up we've got the two fans blowing
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at full speed in a push pull configuration it is quite loud as I
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mentioned before there you can see the updated Corsair CPU block SL pump unit
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so I'm just coming around to this side so you can get a better look at it all
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right and then we've got the uh the flexible hose barbs along with the uh
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uh rotary fittings that's the word I was looking for then will uh that will
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rotate according to where you want to mount your fan radiator unit now you're
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going to see performance is quite a bit better than the Vantage unit and the
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reason for that is because of just the
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basic laws of physics um here compare
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the radiator size whoops okay there
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compare the radiator size you can see the h70 radiator is about three times
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thicker than the Vantage radiator and it just comes down to the basics of how
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much surface area is there how much heat can you dissipate well there you go so
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that's why the Vantage didn't get much of a benefit from two fans but the h70
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does because you actually need a lot more static pressure to push the air
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through such a thick radiator and get all that cooling potential out of it so
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as the last comparison I'm going to throw a decent high-end air cooler on
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here and see how that compares to the h70 as well as to the cool
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Advantage I'm just dismantling the h70 right now and I thought I'd actually
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give kulet major props for their uh for
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their mounting system which is so easy you just uh you just align the little um
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bolt through on the top see you just align it with the line for which uh
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which mounting mechanism you need 1366 1156 and 775 and then they have three
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separate back plates for all three um and then they've got like these great
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thumb screws that you can use to bolt it on and the coair one while it's very
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secure and attaches well and all of that good stuff uh it's a little bit finicky
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you have to put it together you have to put these little plastic Clips in then you have to thread the screws through
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and then you got to like kind of position the whole thing in the right place and then you got to use a
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screwdriver it has no thumb screws uh you got to insert the little pegs in the
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back of the back plate it's not really very intuitive like I said once it's on
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it looks good and it's very secure but um it could use a little bit of e of use
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ease of use work all right so now we've got a nocta
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nhu 12p on the bench I'm using those same Corsair fans because I want this to
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be as much an Apples to Apples comparison as possible so you can see
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there I've got the other cor font it down on the other side now what I want you to note first of all is the size so
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look at the density of the fins on there look at the density of the fins on the
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Noctua look at the approximate physical sizes of the two units you can see they
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are quite similar now what you're about
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to see may shock you the noct TOA unit
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per performs not as well as the h70 all
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right so it's about 5° higher than the h70 but that is to be expected given
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that it is not optimized for high RPM
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fans it is actually optimized for low RPM fans so if we were to take a cooler
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which I probably should have done in retrospect that has a more densely
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packed fin Arrangement we'd probably actually see similar performance to the
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h70 now that's not to say that the h70 doesn't have a place in the world
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because the reality of it is that that uh coolers like the vantage with their
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LCD screens their programmable uh Wireless communication system for lights
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and other cooling devices in your system have a place they are they belong with
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people who are more worried about the features than the maximum possible
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overclock uh coolers like the age 70 I
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mean really at 5° better than this particular Tower cooler that puts it
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right up there in the top of air coolers
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so you know that's an impressive feet in itself and in a nice compact package
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that allows you to a ship your system if you need to so if you're buying a system
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online the h70 is a great choice because it's much less likely to come dislodged
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because it doesn't have as much weight hanging off the CPU socket and it also
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allows you to oh wait hold on I was going to say something else right yeah
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it allows you to take your your cooling element so you're you're cooling
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radiator whether it's a radiator on a CPU heat sink or a radiator with water
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flow flowing through it and put it right at the back of the case where you can
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take nice fresh air and use that to cool it so you can get better CPU
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temperatures at the cost of slightly worse internal case temperatures so
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thank you for checking out my little review I'm actually not going to bother with the graph after all because I
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showed you guys the temperatures in fact here I'll even you know what here's how
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I'll do my graph uh nh-
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u2p okay and then that one was about 73
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to 81 so I'll show you guys the cooling performance that I had written down so
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you can see the vantage with its stock fan was a little bit higher than the
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vantage with dual fans the h70 is the big winner in terms of performance
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although it is quite expensive and then the nhu 12p I believe that's the se2 or
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something like that um was somewhere in
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between but you have the convenience of it just being an air cooler and just
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strapped to the CPU heat sink um
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brackets CPU mounting holes that's what I was looking for