The Corsair H80i GT and H100i GTX AIO Coolers Review
by E. Fylladitakis on November 16, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- Liquid Cooling
- Corsair Link
Testing Methodology
Although the testing of a CPU cooler appears to be a simple task, that could not be much further from the truth. For multiple reasons proper thermal testing cannot be performed with a cooler mounted on a single chip. These reasons include the instability of the thermal load and the inability to fully control and or monitor it, as well as the inaccuracy of the chip-integrated sensors. It is also impossible to compare results taken on different chips, let alone entirely different systems, which is a great problem when testing computer coolers as the hardware changes every several months. Finally, testing a cooler on a typical system prevents the tester from assessing the most vital characteristic of a cooler, its absolute thermal resistance.
The absolute thermal resistance defines the absolute performance of a heatsink by indicating the temperature rise per unit of power, in our case in degrees Celsius per Watt (°C/W). In layman's terms, if the thermal resistance of a heatsink is known, the user can assess the highest possible temperature rise of a chip over ambient by simply multiplying the maximum thermal design power (TDP) rating of the chip with it. Extracting the absolute thermal resistance of a cooler however is no simple task, as the load has to be perfectly even, steady, and variable, as the thermal resistance also varies depending on the magnitude of the thermal load. Therefore, even if it would be possible to assess the thermal resistance of a cooler while it is mounted on a working chip, it would not suffice, as a large change of the thermal load can yield much different results.
Appropriate thermal testing requires the creation of a proper testing station and the use of laboratory-grade equipment. Therefore, we created a thermal testing platform with a fully controllable thermal energy source that may be used to test any kind of cooler, regardless of its design and or compatibility. The thermal cartridge inside the core of our testing station can have its power adjusted between 60 W and 340 W, in 2 W increments (and it never throttles). Furthermore, monitoring and logging of the testing process via software minimizes the possibility of human errors during testing. A multifunction data acquisition module (DAQ) is responsible for the automatic or the manual control of the testing equipment, the acquisition of the ambient and the in-core temperatures via PT100 sensors, the logging of the test results and the mathematical extraction of performance figures.
Finally, as noise measurements are a bit tricky, their measurement is being performed only manually. Fans can have significant variations in speed from their rated values, thus their actual speed during the thermal testing is being acquired via a laser tachometer. The fans (and pumps, when applicable) are being powered via an adjustable, fanless desktop DC power supply and noise measurements are being taken 1 meter away from the cooler, in a straight line ahead from its fan engine. At this point we should also note that the Decibel scale is logarithmic, which means that roughly every 3 dB(A) the sound pressure doubles. Therefore, the difference of sound pressure between 30 dB(A) and 60 dB(A) is not "twice as much" but nearly a thousand times greater (though human perception is itself also not linear). The table below should help you cross-reference our test results with real-life situations.
The noise floor of our recording equipment is 30.2-30.4 dB(A), which represents a medium-sized room without any active noise sources. All of our acoustic testing takes place during night hours, minimizing the possibility of external disruptions.
|
<35dB(A) |
Virtually inaudible |
|
35-38dB(A) |
Very quiet (whisper-slight humming) |
|
38-40dB(A) |
Quiet (relatively comfortable - humming) |
|
40-44dB(A) |
Normal (humming noise, above comfortable for a large % of users) |
|
44-47dB(A) |
Loud* (strong aerodynamic noise) |
|
47-50dB(A) |
Very loud (strong whining noise) |
|
50-54dB(A) |
Extremely loud (painfully distracting for the vast majority of users) |
|
>54dB(A) |
Intolerable for home/office use, special applications only. |
*noise levels above this are not suggested for daily use
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
47 Comments
View All Comments
Beararam - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
Oh, I never doubted your honesty about the numbers you're getting from realtemp, or aida, or whatever. It doesn't matter what they tell you though; if you're getting below ambient on an AIO or air cooler... it's wrong, because the medium you are cooling with is the air in that room.weewoo87 - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
Is your PC on the floor next to your AC vent? The air coming out of your AC vent will be cooler than ambient.xthetenth - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
Good review, but I'd really like to see two things. First if you could pick a good noise level for use without headphones and normalize to that if possible for the product so we could see what lowering some of the more aggressively tuned coolers to a level that's bearable to listen to. Second, I'd love to see whether or not the coolers can be set to an inaudible or at least very quiet idle setting, and if so how much heat they can dissipate effectively in that setting.Adding those and mixing in some air coolers (probably one or two of the high end kilo of metal hanging off your socket coolers, and a stock cooler and 212 as a baseline) would make the reviews fantastic and a source for all the information I'd want when looking at coolers.
rhysiam - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
+1 for the first request... pick a nice acceptable target level in dBA and a fairly average OC'd CPU thermal load and see what temps the coolers can manage. The chart topping temps for these coolers are completely irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of users because of the noise levels. I suspect most coolers would produce impressive temps if they have a jet engine pushing air through them.I realise it's not a perfect comparison, dBA is not a perfect measure of how intrusive the noise levels are, and no doubt people would quibble over whatever dBA and wattage you decided on. BUT, sometimes you just want a quick chart that gives a reasonably accurate reflection of performance under relatively "normal" enthusiast workloads, and temps over ambient at a fixed dBA & wattage would give you that.
To the author - I really appreciate your scientific approach. Thanks for the article and I look forward to seeing the comparison with the high Noctua's in future too.
thekdub - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
Is 1400RPM the lowest these coolers will get using the Corsair Link software? My H100i idles at ~900RPM using a Swiftech PWM hub and is not only inaudible from ~2-2.5 feet away, but also maintains sub-30*C idle temps in a 23*C room with a 4970k. Even at load, the cooler is inaudible (or at least not noticeable) while wearing a pair of open-back headphones.If these new coolers are indeed quieter than the preceding H100i/H80i, then "quiet but tolerable" seems like it is selling them short. You can make these things silent with a custom fan curve and still achieve adequate cooling.
As a side note, I do think the older H100i/H80i have a much more sleek and attractive appearance. The two-tone grey/black on these new ones looks plasticky and cheap.
nmm - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
Such a pity the H110i GTX wasn't in the mix, while you were at it. That really seems like the one worth looking at for anyone who has room for it. Let's face it, if you are in the market for this much cooling, you're probably in the market for as much as you can get for the least noise, which is the H110i GTX.Still, after seeing the figures and description of the H100i GTX pump noise I'm more comfortable sticking with big air for my next build.
Awful - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
Still using my original H100 on i2500K @ 4.8GHz. Still see no good reason to upgrade either. Nice!lorribot - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
There are a couple of real world tests that seems to be missing but may actually be quite useful, firstly cooling performance at a given noise level say 35/40/45db rather than at a given voltage or or how noisy is a system to maintain a 200w load at a say a temperature of 80C.mobutu - Tuesday, November 17, 2015 - link
www.silentpcreview.com constant ambient conditions during their testing are 10~11 dBA and 21~23°C.Anything above 20 dBA is rightfully considered loud.
You need to learn your lesson and stop bullshitting with the following laughable arguments, cause you clearly don't know what inaudible and loud really means:
- "The noise floor of our recording equipment is 30.2-30.4 dB(A), which represents a medium-sized room without any active noise sources.";
- "<35dB(A) = Virtually inaudible";
- "35-38dB(A) = Very quiet";
- "38-40dB(A) = Quiet".
HollyDOL - Tuesday, November 17, 2015 - link
Please review your lessons of physics or at least use google before you start accusations, one of many: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/hearingloss/sound.html