Gadgetory

aisa Tech has a stranglehold on most of the closed-loop liquid cooler market for PC hardware easily holding majority placements and all CLC sold in the u.s. cool it has been a long contender of ASA tax with the two having battled legally over a Stax patent on the pump and block design and it's also been one of course here's to liquid cooling partners both ASA tech and cool it make Corsair liquid coolers though the latter fell out of popularity for a number of years finally with the Platinum line coursers working again with Kula and a mainstream product the H 115 I plateau muses a new pump and block design and that's something we'll show off thoroughly in our upcoming liquid cooler internals comparison video so subscribe to catch that for today we're focusing on reviewing the $160 h 115 I plant them for thermals acoustics and overall value at the price point before that this video is brought to you by be quiet and it's straight power 11 series power supplies the straight power 11 PSU is shipped from 450 Watts up to a thousand watts accommodating most of the gaming PC build requirements you'd encounter and focuses on delivering a higher quality power supply that doesn't sacrifice on efficiency or stability noise is also a heavy point for the straight power 11 using a 135 millimeters silent wins 3 fan that can spin as low as 200 rpm for quieter low load operation learn more at the link in the description below courser has a lot of h1 15s these days there are at least 3 of them so quick recap on those the H 115 I Pro is an ace attack made cooler the H 115 i Platinum is the new coolant cooler that's this one that we're reviewing today the H 115 I original was also a Sutekh but is basically impossible to find these days so the difference is then the H 115 I Pro is an ASA tech Gen 6 pump the ACE tech Gen 6 pump is something we've disassembled in the past and showing the differences between gen 4.5 gen five to ten for Gen 4.5 and generation 5 all three of those aced attack pumps are pretty similar they all have a plastic impeller it's the yellow yellow impeller with three prongs on it they all have very similar internal housing very similar water pathway and the real difference between John 5 and John 6 or Gen 4 in Gen 6 isn't performance but it's theoretically permeation the impeller on Gen 6 was improved it's a metal impeller the in theory the permeation in hot spots within that cooler housing has been reduced so now there's less of a chance of liquid permeating things like the hottest points and the tubes or in the barbs or whatever and that's been the main problem with any closed liquid cooler is over time you do naturally lose liquid that's just what happens and it gets replaced eventually with air and that's what you want to avoid so Gen 5 and Gen 6 in terms of thermal performance they're about the same technically speaking generation 4.5 especially but Gen 5 to some degree they're both a bit better than Gen 6 ASA tech pumps for thermals but the internal design for things like endurance should theoretically favor gem 6 Gen 6 also gives a bit more control to the through software to what the pumps doing and when and some more fans B controls it can do control based on other temperatures instead of just liquid temperatures so if you want to change the pump speed as long as the manufacturer allows it you could theoretically modulate the pump speed based upon something other than liquid temperature which is good because that's kind of a dumb thing to modulate your pump speed based on so anyway those are the differences between those the H 115 I moved to Gen 6 it's otherwise none exciting from the H 115 I the original that is the original was pretty good if you ever saw a V 2 like an H 100 IV 2 that V 2 was a demarcation made because there was a radiator change due to an intellectual property conflict of the original radiator and we don't know the specifics on that but that's that's about what we know so that's the line hub of course there's 115 Series coolers the H 115 I Platinum this one today we're gonna be opening this up in a separate video and we'll show you in great detail the difference between this and the ACE attack made coolers this is kind of exciting because ace tech makes almost all of the coolers you see in the US market this is because ASA tech has a patent that more or less says if you have a pump in the block then we own the design and aisa Tech has successfully gone all the way through court like not a settlement but actually went through court with a judge ruling against Coolermaster that ASA Tax patent was valid and that Coolermaster had to stop some on its side on Ceres effective immediately that went all the way through the process so a stack by nature of this legal chokehold does manage to hold most of the market and make most of the coolers which is rather unexcited from a product standpoint because EVGA corsair NZXT doesn't matter any of them put a new cooler out with asa tech made pump and a tech sourced radiator they're pretty much the same the differences come down to how good's the pan what's the price and what's the RGB difference NZXT made a custom PCB for the RGB x' and that's kind of the difference you get from them so there's your basics now other than this we'll talk about kind of some software issues in the end we'll talk about the installation things like that on the end of the review let's first get into the thermal testing and the acoustic performance our thermal testing for closed-loop liquid coolers is specially designed what we do here is we test the ability to soak the temperature over time because it is liquid and liquid does have tremendous ability to just soak a lot of heat especially from rapid fluctuations in temperature on the device being cooled which is a cpu here and so for that we're averaging over a period a test period of about 15-20 minutes and the test period itself is a little over 30 minutes long and that gives us the steady-state CPU temperatures we want to hit to make those measurements and then we average against some spikes we have implemented into our tests to see how well the soaking power is for each cooler so let's start with some benchmarks and then we'll talk about if this thing's actually any good and worth 160 dollars let's start testing with just the h1 59 platinum on the charts then we'll add a bunch of competitive analysis with other liquid coolers for just the h1 59 platinum we changed pump speeds and fan speeds benchmark performance stock with full pump and fan speed we measured performance as hitting 35 degrees Celsius over ambient on our standardized test bed idle was about 6.5 degrees over ambient setting the pump speed to balanced and leaving the fan speed to fall we saw an increase of two degrees Celsius and load temperatures versus the baseline full speed because it balanced is dependant a bomb liquid temperature and fluctuates based on it silent ended up with these same results we'd really have to strain balanced harder in order to show the differences in theory it should prove more useful when bouncing between idle loads and heavy loads more rapidly in a thermally constrained case but that's not the test scenario we have set up for our test bench balance ran about the same 2,000 to 2,400 rpm range as silent mode did and so the results are functionally the same set to a noise normalized 40 DBA thermals climbs to 41 degrees over ambient for an increase of about 6 degrees over stock we next tested with a repast using our standard a synthetic compound finding almost zero change between the two results we're within plus or minus 1 degrees Celsius margin of error at thirty nine point six degrees versus 41 degrees so it's it's very close the more important thing here is that the stock Kulik compound spread is actually sufficient to cover the x99 cpu this isn't true on most of the preinstalled pastes on the ACE attack coolers where they primarily cover LGA 1150 P use but don't really give full coverage on h EDT cpus this fuller spread across nearly the entire IHS is one of the biggest improvements in the new cooler and it's something that cool IT did well to improve over asa tax with widespread design it's not a big change from what a stack does but it's a small one and one which is noticeable and something that from an attention to detail standpoint is a major improvement just because it's been a problem for so on on the asa that coolers the next test is noise normalized for 40 DBA where each cooler has a noise budget up to 40 DBA at 20 inch distance for measurement in a room with a noise floor of about 26 dB this allows us to see which cooler has the most efficient performance and the trouble with maximum speed benchmarks is that they aren't really comparable as some fans might run at two times the speed of others and produce more noise in the process making them not really fair to compare against each other this test fixes that problem it sets the noise level to 40 DBA so we were controlling for noise to get a compare thermal results and again that measurements at 20 inches away at 40 DBA with our controlled paste applied the H 150 and I platinum ends up at thirty nine point six degrees over ambiens which has it functionally tied with the ek fluid Gaming 240 and other coarser H 159 models note that the pro the H 115 I Pro capped out at 37 DBA due to fan speed limitations so it is slightly better here but much more limited in the maximum performance potential something we'll see elsewhere the fluid gaming is a budget class open-loop and has much more water present as it has a standalone reservoir and a separate pump entirely so it doesn't really count as a fair comparison but it's on there nonetheless the H 115 i Platinum is within reasonable margin of error of the other age 115 models and though it was slightly warmer than it given the variables involved in testing we are at the limits of test resolution for these coolers that are all kind of within one to two degrees of each other the H 115 i Platinum does prove better than the H 100 IV to to no one's surprise and better than the be quiet silent loop 280 or close to error margins anyway the three sixty millimeter coolers like NZXT T's kraken X 72 and coarser zone H 150 I outperformed the H 115 i platinum by way of having more fans and a larger radiator when fixed through this noise level this is where those larger coolers really start to excel because they have more fans they have a bigger radiator and they have more liquid they can get away with lower noise while sustaining a lower or at least equal temperature which is really the biggest benefit the cost difference is also present of course so while normalize that 40 DBA and with stock fans to keep cost controlled the H 159 Platinum ends up about two to three degrees warmer than the H 150 I at 40 DBA for most people the 280 millimeter CLC performs well enough and that 2 degree difference may never be noticeable now you could reduce the noise level further on the larger coolers and still sustain equal noise to the 280 core so that's really the magic in it is you can start dropping the RPMs you can drop maybe 238 DB a 37 DBA and still equal performance of a 280 that runs into limitations of the cooling solution as a whole and the fact the fan countin fan size for the fuller chart now the H 159 Platt and I'm at maximum pump and fan speed puts it at 35 degrees Celsius over ambient which has it functionally tied with the EVGA CLC 240 at its maximum RPM of 2500 this difference is the result of EVGA is aggressive fans which hit fifty eight point one DBA really loud to course there's forty nine point one DBA on the Platinum at max speed fifty eight point one just for reference puts it as a nearing something like a reference blower cooler on an AMD GPU it's terribly loud you would want to tune these down to be quieter because it's just unbearable to sit next to you but if you only want to performance well it runs pretty fast the to achieve the same thermal result ultimately but Corsairs achievement is done at a much lower noise level at forty nine verses 58 DBA you're looking at a perceivable to the human ear noise level difference of about 2x the one hundred sixty dollar price point is more expensive than EVGA as $100 CLC 240 but the extra radiator and fan size do benefit the noise levels significantly and account for that price plus there's more RGB if that's something you really care about more fairly compared the H 115 i platinum also competes closely with NZXT he's crackin X 62 also heavily RGB focused which has performance within our error margins it's also near the H 150 eyes 35.5 degrees alt equipped with slower fans and not distant from the original H 115 IV two at 1500 rpm ranking thirty five point eight degrees Celsius over ambient for noise levels at twenty inch distance the H 115 I platinum ends up at forty nine point one DBA when at 17:30 rpm forty DBA when at 1200 rpm and about thirty five point eight DBA when at fifty percent speed or about 900 rpm comparatively the NZXT crackin next six two peaks at about fifty one point five DBA when at 1700 rpm Corsair falls within the expected noise range for a cooler with this fan rpm and this is the max rpm it's about 1730 on each so one thing that you might have noticed the H 115 I pro the Gen 6 ASA tech one is more limited in top-end performance than the H 159 Platinum that's because the pro had more limited fan speeds they were not as effective in cool and as the platen fans that spin faster and so your limitation is sort of artificial if you move the fans around between them they will end up roughly within margin of error of each other all other things controlled but when you're spending 160 bucks on the cooler you probably don't really want to go out and then spend another 20 to 40 dollars on fans because that just seems sort of stupid so what we end up with is a product that is fine like most liquid coolers that are 160 dollars it's not exceptional in any performance measure these things are all pretty much within a couple degrees of each other often within margin of error of their predecessors or of their direct competitors and so that leaves you picking based on price and based on looks and based on maybe if you feel like you can keep the fans or not this is clearly heavily RGB marketed it literally has the the letters RGB in the name so if you don't care about that definitely buy something cheaper the EVGA CLC 280 has long been a good performer it can be tuned and reasonably well because the fan speed does have some range in there to play with and if you just want performance and you don't care about anything else to 80 millimeter radiators are still pretty much the sweet spot for liquid cooling in a closed loop we would still recommend to 80s they're often cheaper than 360s they perform similarly you can get better noise to thermal performance than a 240 and they make a lot of sense the EVGA CLC 280 is a great choice if you don't care at all about RGB LEDs EVGA is RGB LEDs are unimaginative uninspiring and boring and if that's what you want and you're cooler then it's a good product from a strict thermal standpoint this one is more about looks and will leave you to decide if you like the RGB LEDs on it if it's if you are looking for LEDs well of course there's one of the main companies that go it because they've gone kind of insane with LEDs and putting them on everything so they do have a good arguments to make there for the product and that leg of the market now software 10 you some improvement IQ has gotten a lot of advancements over the iterations especially over previous versions of Corsair software so it's much improved but we still had this cooler drop out of software every now and then so three times during testing we actually won was completely invalid we had to throw away the data and rerun it and that was because the software stopped detecting the product or at least stopped interfacing with it so it showed that h1 59 platinum in software and when you tried to control the pump speed through it it actually no longer applied and it still held the old settings that were applied before this sort of firmware crash or whatever happened that caused the cooler to fall out of communication with the software so that is an issue that we hope to see improved now you can patch the firmware we try to do it's all the way up to date so that was not an issue but it seems to be a software issue where it just it just drops out of communication and that's really annoying so we're not sure why that happens but it did happen a couple of times and then software in general it is certainly better than in the past it's not as resource intensive as cam it's not as kind of creepy as cam is but it is also still annoying to use software to control liquid cooling products but you don't have to do it it does make it easier though the radiator bracket screws for this thing are really not deep enough or it needs a pad to screw into behind it so the screws included with the cooler are long enough that they can go through something like maybe a one millimeter or so thick piece of steel if you're going through a case or you're going through an L bracket like we are and it can go through that and then it still goes into the bracket for the radiator and it's still got extra length where you're just you're either gonna drive it into a fin which is fine it doesn't hurt anything or ideally drive it into a pad and so what courser could do to improve here is make the radiator bracket spaced out from the radiator itself a little bit more like half a millimeter maybe would do it extra or make put a pad in there behind the hole that you screw into just like on some of the other cooling products out there so does it hurt it no because the tube with the liquid isn't behind the screw so that's that's great coolermaster screwed that up in the past and it results in leaking coarser got it right but they could still do much better and that's by having more spacing for those for the bracket verses the radiator itself so that could be improved the radiator fan screws are pretty as well we ended up using a couple of washers to just make sure they didn't penetrate too far into the radiator and the cable design is really sort of annoying so all these coolers have the same problem where they have their becoming an octopus oh just a ton of cables sticking out of the block which is unfortunate because that's where you need the most cable management is right in the middle of the computer but you can kind of manage so the cable design has the SATA cable for power and the pump TAC in the same bundle and what you can do is you just pull them apart so it's not terrible they're just wire cables stalled glued together you just pull them apart and it's fine but still we would like to see either separate cables or well separate cables is the best approach because then you can remove the ones that you really don't need and that's something that could be improved cable management is is a consideration here for course art to improve in the future there was recently a recall of the h1 15i Platinum RGB s eversion the white version about one percent of customers were affected it was a specific lot number so keep that in mind as well there has not been a recall on the greater whole of the units but on about 1% of them there was a recall that bothers you then obviously you might want to consider it your buying process if you feel like it was just what it probably was which is a limited manufacturing quality control issue then we can probably move on from the issue but this was a matter of the liquid leaking into and out of the tubing so it leaked into the tubing and it's bright green you'll notice it right away if there's an issue but yep that's that was a consideration so really what you're buying this for is the lights and we'll give Corsair a lot of credit there Corsair has done well with their RGB LEDs they really have they've invested a lot in it there are really good engineers at Corsair who are working on making things RGB illuminated and that seems to be about where the company is focusing right now so if that's what you want well this cooler may well deliver and you can decide based on how it looks in our b-roll if you care about thermals they're all about the same so plus or minus a couple degrees how much that really matter is kind of kind of a toss-up you can run some of the coolers a little bit quieter and get equal thorough performance to this one you buy better fans whatever there's a lot of things you could do but the thing you shouldn't do is buy this cooler strictly because you want good thermals because if that's all you care about there are a lot of options on the market CLC - ATS cheap and CFCs crack in X 62 is good but again expensive for the looks aspect there are plenty of others - and we've got them all in our charts so that's it for this one overall what do we think well it's got some flaws like for example the radiator depth of that bracket it's got flaws with cable management could be improved none of these things are product braking so they're really not big deals it's just it's small stuff we'd like to see improve but it's nothing that completely ruins the product product is perfectly fine overall and we will look at it in a much greater depth in our next video so subscribe for that as always you can go to store it on cameras axis dot net to help us directly for example by buying one of these cobalt blue beer glasses that we have on the store it's got a gold rim on it so you can get the GN teardown logo with cool things like fake VRMs in the design GPU fans and look through it for Easter eggs so other than that patreon.com slash gamers Nexus thank you for watching I'll see you all next time