Corsair A70 High Performance CPU Dual 120mm Fan Air Cooler Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,097 words · ~10 min read
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today I'll be unboxing a brand new product from Corsair this is the Corsair
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cooling air series a70 this is a high
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performance CPU Cooler and uh so just
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this isn't Corsair's first fora into cooling we had the H50 before which I
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have previously unboxed on my channel so this was a high performance CPU Cooler
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but this one is water so it's h for probably Hydro yes there and so this is
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a for air excellent air series so it's
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compatible with lga775 1156
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1366 as well as AMD am2 and am3 so
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pretty much any modern socket is going to be well supported by the a70 let's
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have a look at what we got on the side of the box so there's your Dimensions
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fan speeds and it's in a bunch of different
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languages so you can go ahead and pause the frame if you happen to
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be oh boy I don't know what language that is okay well moving on here's the
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back where they talk a little bit about the way that the H H50 C there I was
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about to say it the way that the a70 handles fan speed so dramatically
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outperforms your CPU stock heat sync here they're showing the performance but
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not the HM they're not showing the noise I guess that doesn't really matter cuz
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they already gave us the noise specs on the other side so 4 8 mm copper direct
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contact heat pipes so those are quite a bit bigger than the standard 6 mil 1es
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it uses aluminum fins as well as dual 120 mm fan so that's one of the
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advantages that the a70 has over the uh
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it's younger brother is the fact that it includes dual 120 mm fans as well as one
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additional heat pipe so let's get the Box open here I'm going to go ahead and
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zoom that back out and let's start
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unwrapping this guy have a look at what we've got in
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store for ourselves here now I mentioned the noise of the
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fans I mean it's not something I'm overly concerned about cuz from the fan
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included with the H50 to all the fans included with the 800d case uh Corsair
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has done a good job of sourcing their fans and they tend to be quite quiet and
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move a decent amount of air so like I said yeah I really wouldn't worry about
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it too much so inside the a70 we find two boxes I'm going to go ahead and go
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with the small one first and I'm going to guess that that's what contains the
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heat
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sink I'm just kidding that's a terrible guess obviously this contains the
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accessories so let's see what we got for accessories inside the box here two
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bands that is all okay I like this so
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they come with kind of a shroud style uh clip that goes right onto the heat sink
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you can see you got four Clips 1 2 3 four just like that another effect that
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the Shroud has is that it keeps the fan slightly separated away from the cooler
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I guess in Theory actually why don't I find out if that's true first but what a
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shroud would do if it did keep it separate from the cooler is it would reduce the dead spot in the middle cuz
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the fan blad spin like this so if they're blowing air through a heat sink
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they're obviously not blowing any air here but if you move it away then it can
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actually blow some of the air sort of this way because it just sort of
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randomly blows air out and the Shroud also keeps it from escaping from the
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side so you're using all of the air flow from the fan to cool the heat sink ah
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okay so there were two boxes but one of them I actually picked the big one so
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this is the small box so this I'm going to guess contains the mounting
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hardware okay the first thing we find are ooh I like these these are great
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these are low speed power uh fan
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adapters rather I think they are okay yeah these look like uh inline resistors
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to slow down the fans if you should desire to do so and then this oh okay
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this is an adapter so you can run both fans off your CPU header as long as you
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have a half decent motherboard made in the last 10 years or so your CPU fan
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header should be able to handle a couple lowow fans like this next we've got some
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a70 thermal compound which I don't recognize the M4 unfortunately sorry and
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then we have oh it's quite heavy though so it's probably a silver based one next
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we've got four thumb screws four rubber
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washers uh and then two of these rubber
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fan mounts is what they're normally for but I can't imagine that's pronouncing
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the fans in this case here is the multi-adapter plate so this is for LGA
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775 1156 as well is 1366 you can see all
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three holes on there and this is got to be for am2 am3 yeah so that's where
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you're going to get your mounting pressure from you clip it on the one side clip it on the other side it's not
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coming off here's a little Corsair guide y Corsair talks a little bit about some
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of their other products thank you for that Corsair and then next we have a
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back plate nice okay so you don't need a back plate on am2 am3 because AMD has
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graciously made that part of their spec that every am2 and am3 board has a back
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plate already so for Intel you will need a back plate and it does come with one
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it's adjustable although I can't oh yeah it's simpler
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than I thought you just slide it it just has a little like um it has a little
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piece right here that sort of fits into the little notches so that it only
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slides so far and yeah that was more straightforward than I thought it was
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very nice very nice Corsair very nice
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next inside this foam we have the cooler itself finally so you know third time a
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charm I'm guessing this is the cooler yes success okay here we will also find a quick
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start guide so this is going to show you how to install your
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cooler uh regardless of which socket you
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want to install it on that's probably too much thermal compound for the record
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I would use probably about half of that
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okay stop do not return this product to
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the store hey I like that working at a retailer it's always nice when the
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manufacturer takes charge of their own RMA service so what it means basically
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to us is that they have a lot of confidence in their own service that
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they feel that they can do an excellent job of taking care of a customer's
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concerns uh before it gets to the point where they have to return the product to
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the store so I guess it means that they feel they can probably resolve whatever
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issue they're having without coming to that so here's some do not eat don't eat
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it next we have the a70 itself so you
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can see the fins are quite tightly packed but that's going to be an
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advantage for a cooler like this because it does come with two fans so I'm going
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to go head and see if I can figure out how their clip system works yeah you can
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see there are little notches right here so that's going to be where the clips go
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so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to clip one one on and then I'll show
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you the other side oh that was easy okay so it's that easy to install the uh the
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A7 fan just like that okay so let's have a look at the cooler itself let's peel
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this off and we'll do the obligatory finger shot where we show the shininess
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although I can pretty much guarantee it's not going to be very shiny but it does appear to be quite flat so this is
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a heat pipe direct touch heat sink that means that rather than having a base
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clamped on top of the heat pipes and then having the heat pipes run through it the heat Pipes make direct contact
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with the CPU uh heat spreader itself so the disadvantage is that it's much
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harder to manufacture this way and it does end up being more expensive and the
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advantage is that you have fewer transfer heat fewer places where the
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heat has to be transferred between different materials you're just going straight to the heat pipes which then
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transfer the heat to the fins and then it gets blown away to the air rather
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than then to the base to the heat pipe to the fins and then away so you're
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removing One Step from the process um I think I didn't explain why dense fins
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are good for a cooler like this and it's because it does include two fans so
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you've got lots and lots of static pressure regardless of
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um well okay not regardless of the fans you're using you got lots of static
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pressure so you're going to get lots of air flow through it even though the fins
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are stacked quite tight there that's what I was trying to say here are the four heat pipes it's very very obvious
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that these are thick heat pipes compared to some of the smaller ones that uh you
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typically see like here let me see if I can find something to compare it against
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really quick here maybe I have like a stock cooler in my bucket over
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here please tell me I got something what
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do I have uh I got some old noct TOA
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heat sink ah yeah okay that'll do so here I think this is noa's original heat
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sink that they least like 100 million years ago so um if I could just get this
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sort of lined up here then you could see that the heat pipes are much much bigger
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there you go so it's more expensive to manufacture cost more and more materials
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and also transfers heat a lot
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better what else did I want to say oh by the way it looks like the shrouds do
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work to a certain extent they do separate the uh fan itself from the
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cooler but but not by a whole lot so I wouldn't rely on it to reduce your dead
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zone by too much but with 120 mm fans
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it's also not that big of a deal I guess that pretty much covers everything I
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wanted to talk about you got your little aluminum brick here which uh you attach
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the mounting hardware too and now my cat's picking at the packing materials
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cut that out you cut that out okay uh
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last thing yes I love this nice aesthetic on the top you got just a nice
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black plate I mean I like the the shiny Chrome finishes as well but I also so
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this is going to look really sharp in a case like the 800d where the entire
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inside is black so now all you've got is a nice black finish top with just the
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Copper from the heat pipe showing through I really like the look of this cooler and while it is quite on the
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expensive side I think it's going to have the performance to back it up thank
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you for checking out my unboxing of the Corsair a70 and uh that's my cat
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stealing the packing materials don't forget to subscribe to
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my lonus tech tips video blog as well as to my ncx tech tips Channel ncixcom and
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thank you for watching