Corsair H100 Dual 120mm Radiator CPU Liquid Cooler Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Corsair H100 Dual 120mm Radiator CPU Liquid Cooler Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
2011-08-10
by popular demand this is my unboxing of
the corsair h 100 so this is I can tell
you already this is going to be one of
if not the highest performance prefilled
pre sealed water cooling kits available
on the market and Corsair actually this
this blew me away they do not do
themselves justice at all with the
numbers that they're giving on the back
of the box here so you know I'll get
into those a little bit more after why
don't I talk about what this product is
exactly so we're all familiar with the
age 50 the age 60 the H is there's an HD
h 70 the H 80 so these are all Corsairs
prefilled liquid cooling solutions that
are maintenance-free
so it means you never have to fill it
with water they are high-performance
they're also lightweight that's one of
the advantages of these prefilled liquid
cooling systems versus a heat sink
because you can strap the huge heavy
part of it the radiator to your chassis
instead of strapping it directly to your
CPU socket which makes them more
shipping friendly it also means that you
can carry the heat away from the CPU
much more efficiently and exhaust the
heat directly out of your case rather
than exhausting it from the CPU socket
area to the air around the CPU socket
area you can just kick it right out so
general advantages of these water-cooled
systems are many they are fairly
expensive but they do have the
performance to back it up so let's see
what Corsair has to say for themselves
on the packaging here courser link
digital support is supported by the H
100 so you can be in complete control of
your cooling monitor or wide range of
parameters including pump speed coolant
temperature and fan speed and customize
your own performance profiles requires
the course or link commander which is
sold separately so there you go
you will have to get the commander if
you want to take advantage of that
particular functionality
all right box contents we'll get into
that when we open it up so don't worry
too much about that see if you have
compatibility is pretty much everything
on the market right now 775 1155 and
11:56 same same mounting holes 1366 a.m.
to and AM three remember a.m. to name
three are also a.m. to plus and am3+ in
terms of
heatsink compatibility cooling
performance for the most demanding
systems this is true performance times
to see this is actually probably more
accurate than what they're saying over
here control at your fingertips the
integrated public pool play includes
push-button control so you can select
the fan speed and cooling performance
setup the best suits your needs white
LED display lets you know the glance
which profile is being used so let's
have a look at this
alright h100 they're saying is going to
be good for sixty six point five degrees
celsius okay and they're saying the h
eighty is at sixty eight point two
degrees celsius let me tell you what is
wrong with this picture
the h 100 just by merit of being a dual
radiator has far more usable surface
area for cooling than something like an
h eighty even though it uses a double
thick rad the reason that that test is
so flawed is that course there is only
clocking that cpu that core i7 cpu
actually here let me get all the stuff
out of the box here first and then i'm
going to go back i'm going to show you
that chart again they're only clocking
that 1366 core i7 cpu at 3.8 gigahertz
that means they're not really dumping a
whole lot of voltage into it now at 66
point five degrees you still have room
to put more voltage into that CPU i
would say you should be able to get a
significantly better overclock out of
the h 100 then either of these other
coolers and the reason is that as soon
as you increase the heat load that you
are putting on the cooler a better
cooler will start to distance itself far
more from an inferior one versus if you
have a heat load that's much smaller so
if you were to take a stock cpu and show
this graph I'm willing to bet all the
water cooling solutions would be about
equal but as soon as you start to
overclock the CPU more over volt it more
and dump in more heat you're going to
see dramatically better performance from
any cooler that either has faster fans
or more surface area that is what all
cooling comes down to surface area and
airflow alright so let's look at the at
the radiator unit itself in a moment and
let's start with the documentation so
first thing here is we've got the parts
list of everything that's included as
well as picture instructions of how to
mount the CPU block very nice okay stop
do not return this product to the story
nice little solutions guy 2010
oops guys it's 2011 now that's okay um
tapping hardware we find funking billion
in one screws in here so those are going
to help you mount it to whatever socket
it is that you need to mount it to we've
got an Intel backplate here okay so you
can see these are adjustable for all the
different sockets you might need to
mount it to and then we have the AMD
hold down hardware here alright
included fans I'm not oh these are nice
ok I was about to say I'm not a big fan
of the fans that are included with the
with the corsair water cooling solutions
typically but I have not yet unboxed the
the h-60
or the H 100 which are the new coolant
ones the pool it designed one so this as
far as I can tell it's just a corsair
sticker over what appears to be the same
fan that cool it used to use I can I'm
just I'm guessing here because the frame
overall has very little flex in it it
feels like a much better constructed fan
than the ones that I've seen included on
previous Corsair and liquid cooling
systems this is a very encouraging step
in the right direction and as we come to
expect from Corsair it's got nice black
cables on it which means it's going to
look slick in your system alright so
let's look at the h80 itself we have
power as well as an RPM monitor so you
are going to need to plug these both in
separately but you can separate them out
further if you need to route them to
separate parts of the case so and they
are black so you should be able to hide
them fairly easily in any enthusiasts
looking system we've also got and this
is related to the these separate fan
control that it does allow with the
commander software we've also got other
fan headers so we've got one for pin two
for pin 3 for 4 pin PWM fan headers on
the side of the CPU block pump unit
itself on this side we've also got a
little proprietary plug right there and
then on the other side we have nothing
except for the rotating hose fittings
right there so what that allows you to
do is wherever you've got this radiator
mounted in your case most cases are
going to use this as a top mounted rad
you will be able to have flexibility on
the CPU block depending where your
socket is located and you're not going
to put undue tension on the hosing
itself which is 1/4 inch and it is a
corrugated tough plastic that will allow
reasonable flexibility but don't overdo
it because if you can't get there as a
potential you could damage it
alright the block itself has thermal
compound pre applied now I know for a
fact this is a very high quality thermal
compound you actually won't get much
benefit from replacing it with an
aftermarket one however once you've
mounted it once and taken it off you
will have to take this off and reapply
thermal compound again
ok just an FYI for you guys now let's
have a look at the radiator itself so
this is a fairly typical
thickness for a radiator it's a touch
thinner than something from a hardware
labs but it's about I'd say it's
actually yeah it's thinner than
something from Swift tech as well but
just by merit of how large it is so
let's hold up the 120 millimeter fan for
comparison so this is a dual 120 mil rad
you will get excellent performance out
of it as soon as you start dumping more
heat into it so you can see actually you
know what why don't we do the iPhone
comparison just so you guys can see this
now I'm not going to expect you to be
able to eyeball whether this is going to
fit in your case or not just based on my
video what you will need to do is do a
little bit of research now I'm going to
tell you there's a few cases that it'll
fit in no problem it'll fit in the 800 d
it'll fit in actually here maybe crazy
russian nose dude if does it fit in the
650d
yeah he says it fits in the 650d so
anything that supports dual 120 mils in
the top has adequate spacing remember
not just for the radiator but also for
the fan has clearance for the barbs to
come out and has the correct spacing for
the 120 millimeter fan mounts some cases
actually have dual 120 millimeter fans
but they're spaced out so what that
means is that when
go to mount your fans on here and then
pull your fans to the case you can see
Corsair uses a standard spacing which
means that there's no gap between the
fans if your case has them like this
then it's not going to be natively
supported and you may have to do some
modoch in order to make it fit okay guys
I think that's pretty much all that
there is to say now I do want to do some
performance evaluation of this unit just
to back up the claims that I'm making
about how it's going to perform very
very well but I think that covers
everything I wanted to do with this
unbox and thank you for checking out my
unboxing of the Corsair H 100 don't
forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips
from our unboxings reviews and other
computer videos and one more thing sorry
I'm going to do this before I cut the
end of the video this button right here
is the one that allows you to see which
profile you are using while the device
is turned on and it does have a white
LED display or not display it has a
white LED backlight behind it
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.