CES 2011: Hands on With Corsair’s New Products

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Index:

Page 1: The CoolIT Situation & Corsair's New Cases
Page 2: Up Close with the H60, LINK & the P3 SSD Series


At this year’s CES, Corsair was one of the few PC component manufacturers brave enough to set up shop at the Las Vegas Convention center. Their major announcement was of course their new-found partnership with CoolIT but there were plenty of other interesting items as well. While we quickly previewed some of the products after their press conference, the show floor allowed us to get some hands-on time with Corsair’s 2011 lineup. But first, more about the direction CoolIT and Corsair are taking.


The CoolIT / Corsair Partnership in Detail

When Corsair launched their Hydro-series of liquid coolers, they used slightly customized versions of Asetek’s products. Asetek will continue supplying Corsair’s more budget friendly H50 and the high performance H70 for the time being but CoolIT has designed a bridge product between the two called the H60. As the Asetek units are phased out, we will likely see a top to bottom lineup of CoolIT designed products.

The retail channel is a tough place to be and CoolIT has decided to stop selling products with their own brand name on them. Instead, all future CoolIT engineered CPU and GPU liquid coolers will be marketed, boxed and distributed by Corsair. Considering Corsair has their own in-house engineering staff this move could also mean an overall increase in the quality and performance of these all in one units as both teams contribute their knowledge to the same cause. It also allows CoolIT to streamline their operations and potentially increase sales by taking advantage of a well-known brand name paired up with a vast retail channel.



600T Special Edition

In a word: stunning. I personally hate the colour white on peripherals, cases and products of all sorts but when the design looks this good; not even I can complain. With a black interior and a few more splashes of black against the automotive-grade paint, this is one case than can only be fully appreciated in person. The MSRP of $160 isn’t that bad either.

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Obsidian 650D

After releasing the wildly popular Obsidian 800D and the ever so slightly less expensive 700D, Corsair is now following those up with an encore presentation in the form of a lower priced, smaller case dubbed the Obsidian 650D. It maintains the overall design characteristics of the E-ATX cases and yet should appeal to a broader marke. Availability is slated for March of this year.

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Up Close with the H60, LINK & the P3 SSD Series

Hydro Series H60 Self Contained Liquid Cooler

The Hydro series is quite well regarded and the H60 will be the first of many CoolIT-designed and manufactured self contained water cooling units in Corsair’s stable. This unit is supposed to bridge the gap between the H50 and H70 but has the ability to mount two fans while sporting a single thickness radiator. As expected, the H60 will support all of the current CPU socket types along with the upcoming AM3+ platform. Compatibility with Intel’s Sandy Bridge socket 2011 CPUs will likely be added through a bracket closer to that platform’s launch in Q4.

Another interesting aspect of the H60 is the new cold plate that has been developed by CoolIT. It packs an amazingly dense fin array into a compact area. This should allow excellent performance from a slim water block. Naturally, this cooler is also compatible with Corsair’s new Link software which we will be looking at below.

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Corsair Link Technology

Some of you may remember CoolIT’s monitoring software which we looked at in depth a few times. Corsair has now taken it and pushed things to the next level with a technology they are calling LINK. LINK involves the installation of a basic controller unit into your system which acts as a control hub and monitoring unit for a large number of Corsair components. Control is granted over temperature sensors, up to four fans, the newer Hydro series CPU coolers and up to four banks of LEDs. Meanwhile, it can monitor and log GPU and CPU temperatures, PSU voltages along with DRAM usage. This is basically an all-in-one ecosystem for literally every Corsair-branded device available on the market and supplies a simple yet effective GUI which should appeal to novices and enthusiasts alike.

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P3-Series SATA 3 SSDs

Along with many other manufacturers at CES 2011, Corsair was showing off their brand new SSDs which support the SATA 6 Gbps standard. Unlike OCZ, Corsair has decided to use Marvell’s P2U1200 controller instead of Sandforce’s SF2000-series. Not much is known about the P2U but rumor has it that it lags slightly behind the 2000 when it comes to 4K read / write ops. We’ll have a review of this in the coming weeks so stay tuned.

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