Monday, May 11, 2015

Corsair H100i Review

Corsair H100i 240mm Water Cooler for CPU's
Corsair H100i
The Corsair H100i is a 240mm water cooler and fan controller built into one. The H100i cools a processor by constantly pumping water over the CPU and pushing it through a radiator to be cooled by the two giant fans mounted on it. In my K2 build I have my cooler mounted to the top of my case since it has air vents and mounting holes specifically designed for a water cooler like this one.

The Corsair H100i is very quiet yet extremely effective at lowing CPU temperatures during large loads. As of the 4th Generation of i7 processors the voltage regulator for the chip is now located on the processor itself instead of the motherboard. This means the chip will heat up to much higher temperatures since full voltage makes it to the chip. Despite that though, the H100i allows me to overclock my CPU from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz without worrying about it melting. Using the Corsair Link give the user even more control over the performance of the cooler as well.

Corsair Link

Corsair Link is a software program that allows the user to control the fans and how they react to heat. You can select which device's temperature it monitors and reacts to. For example you can select the CPU temperature, the CPU load, the motherboard temperature, and the H100i's water temperature. I have it monitor the water temperature because the cooler the water the better it can take heat from the processor and the temperature doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as the processors. In turn this allows me to have complete control over fan speeds. I use a custom scale that speeds up the fans as the water inside the cooler gets warmer. Another really cool feature is the logo on the CPU block lights up and it can be set to show different colors depending on the temperature. The neat part about this is the color will shift from one to another as it get closer to that temp. For example is 40 degrees is yellow and 60 degrees is red, at 50 degrees the light will be orange because it is halfway between them giving you the ability to guess around what temperature what ever component it is monitoring is running at. When doing everyday tasks it stays very quiet and blends in as background noise. However when playing a game, benchmarking, or stress testing will get the fans going but they never get too loud. I've never had my fans automatically ramp way up in any case, I've set them to maximum speed when doing stress tests on the entire system to keep air flowing and minimize the chances of a meltdown.

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