Corsair H100 Reviewed

Specifications

Warranty Five years
Cold Plate Copper
Fan Specification 120mm (x2) 
Socket Support AMD AM2, AMD AM3, Intel LGA 1155, Intel LGA 1156, Intel LGA 1366, Intel LGA 2011, Intel LGA 775
Radiator Material Aluminum
Tubing Low-permeability for near-zero evaporation

The waterblock is also the pump and fan controller. It has a button that sets the profile to high, medium or low by pressing the button on the head unit – above the CPU, inside the case.

The 120mm fans connect to the head unit and the head unit connects to a molex plug for power. There is also a fan header to connect to the motherboard so that you know the pump RPM and for those of us who hate “CPU FAN FAILURE” errors on boot.

Corsair have chosen to stick with stock standard black for the radiator, fans and hosing with the only white being the Corsair logos on the fans and head unit. There is an indicator light on the head unit so that you can see what performance profile is operational. Well if your case has a window or you don’t use the side panel, you will know what profile has been set.

We believe that the manufacturer recommendation for installing the H100 is to draw air from outside the case, passing it through the radiator into the case to get the most optimal cooling results. The instructions were not crystal clear but we tested it both ways and found the difference to be very minimal on our test rig – within the margin of error to be fair.

Corsair have included all of the retention brackets and socket support you could ask for and they also back this product with a 5 year warranty.

Installation

Installing the retention bracket on the motherboard was easy but there was one thing that we thought we should mention: the bracket feel loose initially. We thought we’d done something wrong because there was movement in the retention bracket before the head unit was attached. We quickly checked the Corsair Forums to find that this is normal – forum experts advised that the head unil/pump.waterblock would tighten this up once mounted. Unlike a lot of what you read online, this piece of advice turned out to be true and it was easy as can be to install.

We attached the fans to the radiator and then mounted the unit in the roof of a CM Storm Stryker case – before the motherboard. In hindsight, we could have done it with a motherboard in place in the STRYKER because it has a fair amount of headroom but if you don’t have a lot of space and you are doing a new build, perhaps consider installing the H100 first and working around the hoses. when installing the motherboard, we just secured the head unit out of the way with a large cable tie.

The fans plug into the head unit without any drama and it screws easily onto the retention bracket. We can’t stress enough how easy it was to install this thing.

The pump comes with thermal compound already attached and although we were tempted to use some of our NH-11 thermal paste, we stuck with the pre-applied stuff and used the product in the way that Corsair intended. As it turns out, the stock compound does a nice job.

One of the first things we noticed after installing the H100 was the space inside the case. If you have high profile RAM like corsair Vengeance with the higher fins, this is the cooler for you – clearance will never be a problem here.

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