Corsair Hydro H70 CPU Cooler Review

Closed system water cooling units have been around for some time now but they have only begun gaining widespread popularity in the last few years. These units are meant for first time users with little or no experience with water cooling but want to take a “baby step” away from the sometimes lower-performing air based CPU cooling solutions. We have seen several products in this particular market and while some were excellent performers, others left much to be desired.

Corsair originally introduced customers to water cooling with their HydroCool units but made the jump into closed system units with their Hydro H50 last year. It was a reasonably priced unit that offered good performance but Corsair wanted to push things to the next level with a brand new product. This all new unit from Corsair may be called a H70. This name may give the wrong impression that it is nothing but a newer revision of the H50 but it is actually a totally different design.

The new H70 sports not only two fans, a new beefy 120mm single bay double thick radiator, a new lower profile pump/heat block heat exchanger but also a much-improved installation setup. So throw out any and all preconceived notions you have about this product and start with a fresh slate. What we have here is a performance-oriented water cooler that is supposedly more than a few steps ahead of its predecessor on a number of levels.

While the Corsair H70 is new on the market, it is quickly becoming widely available at North American retailers. Amazingly, it is not even selling for above, or even at par with its MSRP since we have already seen it for a little as $97 Canadian. On paper this combination of higher performance, lower hassle and a (technically) sub $100 price tag sounds like a winner to us. Is that what this unit is, a “winner”?