26.2.2020

I was recently upgrading my PC which included a new motherboard, CPU and RAM. I decided to go down the water-cooling path for the new CPU. Although more expensive than some other manufacturers, I went with Corsair as they have a good reputation.The new CPU is the OctalCore Intel Core i9-9900K, 4700 MHz (47 x 100) which should fulfil my needs for a few years. The motherboard is an Asus Prime Z390-A and the RAM is two Corsair 3600 RGB 8GB giving 16GB of RAM. Both the motherboard and RAM are RGB devices. So, the choice of this water-cooler, with its RGB fans, seemed a logical choice.When I first unpacked the cooler, the task ahead seemed a little daunting.There are lots of components to assemble and a pile of wires that have to connected to the system. This is a multiplatform cooler so it comes with parts for Intel and AMD processors. Fortunately, by default it’s setup for Intel which saved a bit of work. The instructions are okay but they can leave you wondering if you are using the right parts.I set up the fans in a pull format when I fitted them to the radiator. As I was fitting the radiator at the bottom of the case, this seemed the logical way to do it. This will then draw cool air through the radiator. There are two leads coming from each fan, one for power and the other for the LED lights. These have to be connected to the corresponding leads coming off the heatsink pump.Fitting the heatsink pump on the processor was pretty straight forward. There is thermal paste on the heatsink already but be careful not to disturb it prior to fitting. Was clamped into place you have a couple of other wires to connect. One has to be connected to a SATA power socket which will then supply the power to the pump and fans. The other single wire should be connected to the CPU fan connector on the motherboard, so that the motherboard doesn’t complain that there’s no CPU fan. There is just one more connection to be made, the supplied USB lead has to be connected to the side of the pump with the other end connecting to a spare USB2 header on your motherboard. This allows software to control the RGB lights.As you can see, the job isn’t easy but the rewards are well worth the effort. While I am typing this review, the CPU is running at around 25ᵒC. If I ramp up the processor cores to 100%, the temperature gets up to 68ᵒC for a few seconds and then drops down to around 50ᵒC. This is so much better than air cooling where I’ve had temperatures as high as 80ᵒC and static. What’s more it’s virtually silent.On the downside, I had to send the first one back as the fan lights weren’t working properly. A minor problem but frustrating. Theirs is always the possibility of failures and it’s not always a quality issue. While probably tested fine in the factory, the units have undergone the rigours of travelling to their final destination. The main thing though, is that it was replaced without question.Overall, I am very pleased with the quality and functionality of this water-cooler.

29.6.2019

While installation for me wasn't quite as easy as it should have been, I can't fault the cooler for that, instead the Corsair 460x I was installing it in. Considering there is space for fans at the top, Corsair really should have added some extra space up top in order to fit a radiator there. I instead ended up installing the radiator on the exterior of the case, at the top. Regardless, this isn't the fault of the cooler, and when I initially attempted to install it with the motherboard out of the case it went very smoothly, far easier than installing a high end air cooler. The included instructions were sufficient, but nothing special. Not everything was as clear as it could have been,however the installation itself is pretty intuitive and so this is a non-issue.When I initially powered on my computer for the first time after installing it I was shocked at how quiet it was. I actually ended up peering into my case to ensure that the two included ML140 fans had been connected properly. It really is dead silent, even on the default profile, and my three Corsair SP120 RGB case fans make significantly more noise than this cooler. After tweaking the fan profiles of everything and leaving the pump on the 'balanced' preset I cannot hear my computer (~0.75 metres away from me on my desk) when gaming with my speakers.With my 8600k on stock settings idle temperatures, while insignificant, were sitting around 32C in my room with an ambient temperature of 19C. What was really impressive was the temperatures I was seeing under load - in Aida64 Extreme on stock settings temperatures barely exceeded 60C after half an hour on the stress test, and all the while my system remained dead silent. After over-clocking my i5 8600k to 5Ghz at 1.350V I reach 68C under the same test. This is all with the included thermal paste on the cooler, and on a non-delidded processor. This performance is really impressive to me coming from air cooling.In terms of negatives, the only thing I can think of is the USB cable coming from the cooler. To control the RGB this must be plugged in, however the way that it comes out of the cooler can make it somewhat difficult to cable manage. I tried to route it underneath the VRM heatsink, however it comes out some distance from the motherboard, meaning that it is still very visible from the exterior of my case. An integrated solution for this would be more appealing than the mini USB cable utilised here, as it would make it easier to hide the cable coming out from the waterblock. On the plus side this cable is black, and so does not stand out too badly.Overall this cooler is superb, and does everything it needs to very well. The mix of performance and aesthetics cannot be faulted, and the 360mm offerings from both Corsair and other brands do not pose a significant enough bump in performance to justify the increase in performance in my opinion. This is a five star product.

27.5.2020

For disclosure I have been building computers for over twenty years. I have worked on them professionally and personally in that time. Although I found it an easy install I imagine a novice might struggle and would be better starting out with something a bit simpler.Firstly mounting the block and the radiator was mostly very simple. The Intel bracket is in place by default and it is quite stiff to remove. I double checked I was actually doing what they wanted as it did take a bit of force to come loose. However once that was done it was simple to remove my air cooler and mount the Corsair (thermal paste is pre-applied) in its place.The Rad gave me a little bit more of a headache.I was building in a MicroATX case and I wanted to mount it in the front. My case isn't fantastic and unfortunately the top drive bays are riveted and not easily removable. However I know from experience that most AIO cooler rads will fit in the gap no problem. The Corsair one was slightly thicker and no amount of force could make it go in. I ended up mounting it in the top and sadly lost my 140mm dust filters. However it was easy to fit in that spot and it does look nice.There is actually quite a lot to connect when putting this system together. Each fan has an RGB and power header that need to be connected to the leads coming off the block. The block itself has a USB connector that needs to be run to a USB header on your mmotherboard. It's fairly self explanatory but you do need to make sure you connect your fans to the pump cables not onto the RGB/fan headers on your board like you might with a normal case fan. I had a read of the manual and I thought it was actually pretty poor on this front. I don't know if Corsair just assume people building with this know what they're doing. Though reading it over I felt the descriptions were likely to mislead less experienced builders.Once booted I was impressed with the results. My case is inside a desk so airflow isn't always that great especially at the top and back. However the CPU was idle at around 30C (about 15C cooler than with air) and while gaming it was mainly between 50 and 60C. The noise level from the cooler and its fans were low (in fact I couldn't tell they were running over the GPU) so I am very happy with the new setup.ICue is actually a really good bit of software. I own a Corsair wireless mouse, headset and now cooler and I have never had a problem using the software. My kids love the RGB and I love the temps/acoustics so everyone has won.A great product and the only mark down I have given is for the poor manual and instructions. I actually feel like you could use it for something like a HTPC as it really is quiet enough that I reckon it could live in a living room PC. In fact I am impressed enough I have just ordered a commander and three case fans as I feel like the basic ones in the case are letting the side down.

27.10.2016

Having owned this for about a week now, I thought I might leave a review and give some advice to those looking at getting a AIO liquid cooler. First let me say that this is my first water-cooler that I have ever installed, so with that in mind I want to highlight the following.1. For those of you building a PC on a tight budget with not much care for aesthetics, I would go with an air cooler with a big heat-sink (e.g. Hyper Evo 212 or ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro) because if you stick a Noctua fan on there you'll have a far quieter and probably better experience, for far less. However if you are like me and love the aesthetic that a water-cooler provides and hate big heat-sinks getting in the way of your RAM sticks and motherboard,then water-cooling is definitely the way to go.2. The noise. These fans are very noisy at anything over 50% speed, and are small vacuum cleaner level at 100%. Corsair tell you in the manual to plug both fans into the cable coming off the pump housing, and then the cable that comes off that into the cpu fan header. This didn't work for me because while running basic tasks the fans would ramp up to 100% sporadically which became very distracting. I started looking on forums and people were having similar issues. I read somewhere that the pump should stay at 100%, because this provides the best cooling and means less wear and tear on the pump (a changing load is much worse for it). To fix this I simply plugged the main cable that comes off the pump housing into the 3 pin water pump header on my motherboard (this stays at 100% all the time), and plugged in the two fans into CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT on my motherboard. Then I controlled them all using the fan controller in my UEFI BIOS to keep them both below 50% as much as possible.3. With all that being said it really does keep my processor very cool - my core i7-6700k clocked at 4.7 GHz wasn't going above 70*C and at idle it sits around 20 - 25*C depending on room temperature. I also like the RGB control of the corsair logo, which can be changed with corsair link software and configured to changed based on CPU temperature. I have mine on white most of the time and set to change to red when it goes over 70*C.All in all a very good all in one closed loop cooler, but I have to knock off a star for the fan design. While they may be high static pressure fans and work well at pushing air through the radiators, they far too noisy at anything above 50%. Those who have their hearts set on this you have two options: A) Do what I outlined above, if your motherboard allows it -enough fan headers, fan control in UEFI BIOS- or B)You can swap the fans out for some quieter 120mm fans. Noctua NF-P12 PWM fans would probably be a good option, though brown doesn't look too great in most builds.

18.7.2020

.. a vast improvement over any 'stock' cooler or many aftermarket passive or active air coolers. Please note that I can't comment on Intel mainboards, but I've added these to a few AMD machines and they all work wonderfully.To install this on an existing machine, you may need to disconnect and remove *everything*, as the mainboard needs to be removed from the case (unless the case has a removable right/lower panel). The plastic heatsink then needs to be removed (crosshead screw) and the metal retaining plate will then come away from the rear of the mainboard.It starts to be tricky here. The radiator unit needs to be screwed to the (normally) back of the case,

17.7.2017

Brilliant solution to keep your CPU cool. I use it on an i5 4460chip in a mid tower case in the top position in push configuration..Thats how it came in the box. I also have a 200mm side panel fan and a 140mm rear fan both pulling into case.120mm in a push configuration as that's how case came and I cant get to the fan mounting..I do it this way as I have an ambient air temp of 36c in the summer.The water cooler itself is quite large, In fact its solid and well built. The fan is running at full speed, this isn't a ( I ) unit with software fan control, You don't really need it on this size. There are 2 leads coming from it, One 3 pin for the CPU fan header and a 4 pin for the system fan header,

27.11.2019

I purchased this as an upgrade from a MasterLiquid Lite 120 that was on its way out, and to cool a Ryzen R7 2700X at 4.2GHz on all cores, with a 1.43v vcore, on a ASUS Prime X470 Pro. I'm also running a few LL120/140 fans, with a Gigabyte GTX 1080 8GB Windforce OC. First impressions, after using it for a day (almost).Installation:I installed this in a Phanteks Eclipse P350X case, which is supposed to support 280mm radiators, but the power switch and circuit board/box gets in the way. I knew this beforehand, after doing some research. The modding required was a little more extreme that I was led to believe, but I did it.Furthermore, I ran into an issue that others have in the reviews with the radiator itself.

13.12.2018

This hardware was purchased to replace my old (2012) H60 cooler. Whoever put together this package did not consider the likelihood of someone having a slightly thicker casing than usual as the short bolts provided did not reach the radiator! Therefore I had to use the ones from my old H60 and even then they proved too long so they had to be packed out to ensure a tight fit to the casing. It took me a lot longer to fit the fan and radiator than I had anticipated and this was exacerbated by the difficulty of getting the bolts into the thread on the radiator- I assume because of enamel on the threads. My advice is to try the bolts into the rad' before placing it inside the casing just to ease the process.

15.5.2020

The looks of this set up are stunning. All white radiator and coolant lines and plenty of illumination from the centre of the pump and around the outside of the pump. Fans have two rings of LED's (LL120 has 16 per fan), not quite as many as the Corsair QL120 (34 per fan) but lighting effects are still very good when using the iCue software. Custom fan curves are easy to set up on the software and fans can be completely stopped when not under load making them silent. At medium speeds they are very quiet but running at max under stress testing they are obviously quite loud which is expected at 2200 RPM. I'm not entirely sure on the cooling performance as standard as I already had 2 corsair fans so I set my cooler up as push pull (with 4 fans)

6.7.2019

Bought this as I had the previous H60 version which I hoped would be a straight swap which it was.The unit was very easy to install even with the chaotic wiring in my particular computer. The hardest thing I had to do was plug in the 2 connectors for the liquid cooling and fan which were in the the most inaccessible places on the mother board, but that's not really the fault of corsair to be honest.It would have been nice if the instructions gave a little more guidance on how to locate the connectors as there are about four possible connectors to choose from on a motherboard, I thankfully had the foresight to note where the previous cooler connectors were plugged in.On boot up the inside of the computer was bathed in white light which I didn't expect but is nice anyway.

3.12.2016

I originally bought this product after a pre-order for the new NZXT Kraken X62 failed to arrive on the promised date, and I was unable to complete my new build without a CPU cooler. I read some reviews and comparisons online and found that this AIO unit was a leading competitor, checked Amazon and found that it was £25 cheaper, so I cancelled my pre-order and purchased this. I'm so pleased I did.It was very easy to install the pump/waterblock with clear instructions, the only minor improvement that I thought could be made to the process would have been to label and bag the different Intel socket and AMD pump mount stands separately. I had no issues with the included thermal compound,

10.12.2014

If you're looking at the H55 as an entry into the world of all-in-one liquid coolers, I can assure you that this is a very capable little cooler.Features:Unlike its bigger brothers, the H55 isn't really meant for crazy overclocks. The unique feature of this cooler is that it operates very quietly (~1500RPM for the pump), yet manages to cool stock or mildly overclocked CPU effectively. The slim radiator should ensure that it fits most cases without issues and comes with all mounting kits nesescery to be used with both AMD and Intel CPUs.Noise:This unit is very quiet, HOWEVER, you must replace the stock fan since it is quite loud and cannot be controlled through the motherboard.

30.1.2017

very good cooler my i7 6700k is running idle at 25c however i havent stressed tested it but it is a good cooler unfortunately the stock fans are quite loud my 4 case fans are quieter, another thing is that the piping is quite stiff making maneuvering the radiator slightly difficult nothing major. Also make sure you use the right standoff screws the only one that clearly is different is the AMD ones but the difference in the other types are not specified. I would prefer if they seperated the standoffs and labeled the bags to make it clear. I struggled a bit to fit this into my NZXT H440 but thats just the issue with the case.

7.6.2018

I'd almost bought the EVGA CPU 240mm cooler, but I read some reviews which really threw caution in the mix. Instead I opted to get this one. The CPU cooler on my last PC was also Corsair, and had done very well for me.They're a brand I trust for sure. (You have to trust something when it's keeping £300+ CPU's safe.) CPU idles at around 30-33° it also seems to keep pretty cool under load, which is the most important thing.If I had a couple of negatives to add I'd say that I don't like the power cable, which is a USB-C type cable that plugs to the underside of the cooler. Maybe this is common with AIOC, but obviously us PC enthusiasts like cables to be as discreet as possible. This is not very discreet.

3.3.2016

Bought this fan over the H80i GT version. Not sure what the difference is between the 2 but being the newer model im guessing its been improved some way!?? Struggled to fit in Zalman Z11 Plus case, had to remove one of the top fans to get radiator in, which also sits right up against cpu but managed to squeeze all in - would be better in a full case.Performance wise this is my first attempt at overclocking and after a few days i've been able to overclock my i5 3570k to 4.5ghz stable with a max temp of 81c under load. I could reduce temp but would mean faster fan speeds and this thing can get quite noisy if switch fan profile to performance!!Overall i'm happy with the product,

Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro RGB 360mm - Reviews

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