Corsair H60 Self-Contained Liquid CPU Cooler Review

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] It's time to turn a new page in the Techgage book with the breaking in of our latest CPU cooler and hard drive testing system. This has been a long time coming and I'm excited to be able to offer readers some comparison numbers before any money is shelled out on gear to keep temperatures down or push storage capacity up, so pick your poison. We have you covered. I can't think of a better way to kick things off than with a look at Corsair's all-in-one liquid cooler, the H60. Corsair had partnered initially with Asetek, an OEM that is well known for supplying custom cooling systems to some of the largest system builders. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show back in January, it announced an additional partnership with Canada-based CoolIT Systems, with the H60 being the first product released under this new agreement. This cooler boasts some significant changes from previous products in the Hydro series, so let's jump right in. Nestled in between the previously released and Asetek-built H50 and H70, the H60 supports all modern sockets starting at AMD's AM2 and Intel's LGA775 onward. The block and integrated pump that mounts over the CPU now features a low profile square combination rather than the typical round design, which means the mounting system is also different, but that will be covered shortly. Front row center is the Corsair logo, the ribbed inlet and outlet hoses run from the right side of the unit and the 3-pin power lead extends from the top edge. The business end of the all copper block is secured by eight countersunk screws and comes with a pre-applied thermal interface material that is protected by a plastic cap. This has been stripped off to give a better view of the surface of the base. The finish is not mirror smooth but is very good with only light machine marks visible and it's perfectly flat on both axis when checked with a straight edge. Don't mind the markings on the base though. I'll explain them later. Not only is the surface of the block important but also how the fluid travels through it to pull heat away. On the other side of the cold plate, according to Corsair's official specifications. is the split-flow manifold with micro-channels. This design allows the fluid to hit the center first before moving to the sides and the micro-channels increase the surface area that the fluid travels over to pull additional heat away from the CPU. Opening the casing would break the seal and destroy the review sample so we left it well enough alone. Thankfully, Corsair provides a detailed image on its website: The hoses on the H60 measure about a full centimeter in diameter from outside edge to outside edge and are about 11.5" long. These connect to an aluminum radiator that appears to be similar to the one used in the H50 measuring 120mm wide, 152mm high and 27mm thick. The block, pump, hoses and radiator also depend on the correct fan to complete the cooling job. The included 120mm fan is powered by a separate 4-pin connector. It's branded as a Corsair unit and carries the part number CF12S25M12AP but this does not give any indication who the actual OEM is. The official specifications are that it operates at up to 1700 revolutions per minute, moves 74.4 cubic feet per minute at 30.2 A-weighted decibels. It also claims to offer excellent static pressure, which is essential for pushing air through a radiator efficiently. For mounting hardware, AMD systems win the award for simplicity. On the left are two brackets that fit over the block housing once the AMD brackets are removed, two loops hook onto the mounting points on the motherboard and two of the four thumbscrews are used to hold it all in place. Intel systems will use the tried and true back plate method found on the right. In addition to the back plate there are four double ended risers and all of the included thumbscrews are used. Also included are four long bolts with washers to secure the fan and radiator to the case. This is a fully contained, all-in-one liquid cooling system so there is no maintenance needed. It has been pre-filled with a mixture of distilled water and propyl glycol to reduce corrosion and build up and is also leak tested prior to shipping. When compared to custom water setups, this is very simple for the end user and means that we get to skip forward to the installation and testing instead of talking about silly things like clamps and barbs and reservoirs and such. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Installation & Testing] For those who have installed the H50 or H70 and feel that the "ring" mounting system can be a bit of a pain, you're in luck. That system has been given the axe in favour of a much more simplified method for both AMD and Intel platforms. The H60 comes fitted for an Intel based system so the first step is to line up the four mounting points on the back plate by sliding them into position based on the CPU socket type. The riser threads through them, the block is placed over top and the thumbscrews are put in place over the top of the risers. AMD users will need to remove the Intel brackets that are held on by two small screws on each side. The AMD brackets are then screwed on, the loops are threaded up through the tabs, the block is put in place and thumbscrews are screwed down onto the top of the loops. Leaving them loose allows for a bit of play so they can be positioned to hook onto the plastic catches on the motherboard before tightening them down. The fan and radiator are just as easy to mount. To start with, a washer goes onto each of the four bolts that are then threaded through the holes in the case at an open fan area. The bolt goes through the fan and into the radiator where it is tightened. The last piece of the puzzle is to connect the power for the pump to the CPU fan header on the motherboard and the power for the fan to a spare chassis fan connector or directly to the power supply with a 4-pin to 4-pin Molex adapter. The fan can be run off of a fan controller if needed but it's recommended to run the pump off of a steady 12V source. Once installed, users will hopefully see something that looks like this, but the radiator can be mounted with the hoses at the top or bottom and can even be mounted at the top of a case so users can get creative if the case allows. Testing. Stock CPU settings were obtained by setting the AI Tweaker option within the BIOS to Auto. and the maximum stable overclock frequency of 3.85GHz was obtained after setting the base clock to 107 and the multiplier to 36. Our locked CPU was able to do this on stock voltage so the vcore was raised to 1.25V to generate additional heat. All of our testing is performed in a near steady 20°C ambient environment with readings taken before and after with a standard room thermometer. AIDA64 Extreme Engineer is used for monitoring and recording all system temperatures throughout the testing process. All fans are run at 100% during testing and all coolers have any pre-applied thermal interface material replaced with Zalman's ZM-STG1 Super Thermal Grease due its ease of application that virtually eliminates the possibility of skewed temperatures due to poor surface contact. Windows is allowed to sit idle for 10 minutes after startup to ensure all services are loaded before recording the idle CPU temperature. CPU load temperatures are generated by performing a 20 minute run of OCCT LINPACK using 90% of the available memory. The components used for testing are: Component Techgage Test System Processor Intel Core i5-2400 - Quad-Core (3.10GHz) Motherboard Asus P8P67 WS Revolution - P67-based Memory Corsair Dominator 1x2GB DDR3-1600 7-8-7-20-2T Graphics AMD Radeon 5450 Audio On-Board Audio Storage Kingston/Intel SSDNow M Series 80GB SATA II SSD Power Supply Corsair HX650 650W Chassis Thermaltake Armor A90 Mid-Tower CPU Cooling Corsair H50Corsair H60Corsair H70 Et cetera Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit And the results! We decided to test the H60 against the H50 and H70 to see where each one falls on the performance scale. Just as expected, not to mention intended by Corsair, the H60 ended up smack in the middle of the pack. These results show just how efficient the new design and fan are when compared to the previous products. When overclocked and under full load there was a five degree improvement on the H50 and it only trailed the H70 by three with the later sporting a thicker radiator and two fans. From a noise perspective, the H60 is a little on the loud side but the fan run at 100% all the time. When paired up with a fan controller or software users can keep the noise down until they need the extra cooling power. Just for fun I used a simple, single channel fan controller and found that at about 70% the fan was whisper quiet and started to get drowned out by the case fans. It's no wonder that Corsair has more coolers up its sleeve that will use this new design including the H100 that features a 240mm radiator. In a future review it's going to go up against a personal favorite, a CoolIT Vantage C240 prototype, so stay tuned. For now though, it's time to pack it in and finish things up. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Final Thoughts][Top Ad] I've personally been using an all-in-one liquid cooler in one form or another off and on for about a year and have not looked back. They allow users the ability to have a liquid cooled system that is either close to or on par with current high-end air coolers while requiring no maintenance and sometimes for less money. Also, many of the best performing air coolers are so large that they will not fit into some cases whereas the H60 shouldn't have much of a problem at all seeing how the radiator isn't much bigger than a typical 120mm fan. Installation of the previous models could be a bit rough on those who may not be used to installing components, but the new method used on the H60 could be completed by a trained monkey (in this case, that's pretty close to the truth) and the documentation...

Corsair H60 Self-Contained Liquid CPU Cooler Review

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