Corsair Hydro H70 CPU Cooler Review Comment Thread

[AkG]

Why do people think in order to get "true" water cooling you need to do it yourself? Is a custom botqiue build PC any less a PC because someone else put it together for you? Yes you will spend more for it then doing it yourself, but to many people TIME is MONEY and they rather have it done for them by professionals. The end result is the same: enjoyment of their new item.

To put this another way, no one demands that in order to have "true" air cooling solution you need to build/put together the cooler yourself. So why treat water based CPU cooling solutions differently?
Your certainly will not get argument from me on price vs performance of a custom loop vs a pre built. You are paying for time and effort of having someone else do it for you.

Your certainly will not get argument from me on less enjoyment and satifaction of a job well done from building a custom loop vs a pre built. As these are a plug and play solution. No hassle factor. No complicated learning curve.

But these units are still water cooling solutions. To say otherwise is to be extremely short sighted. Yes this still only a single bay rad but there are dual rad pre-builts out there IF someone needs even more cooling power, BUT it a great first step for new comers to water cooling to gain some confidence in the "safety" of water cooling. Not many learn a new language by jumping in and moving to a different country where their native tongue is not spoken. Most buy "lean to speak XYZ" books and audio. They take courses, etc and over time get into more advanced and more in depth real world usage...OR they don't and are happy with their new-found ability at a minor level. The H70 and CoolIT Eco are the equivalent water cooling first steps. Nothing more, nothing less.

[fishingfanatic]

Oh no, I agree. The common belief is if it isn't some massive cooling system it's not a true water cooling unit. Thus the wc crowd doesn't consider it as such. Yes it is, it's a small step forward. Most who I've talked to balked at these pre manufactured wc kits. I'm not a wc guy yet, thought of getting one of these pre man.
units for my 480, but still have problems getting over having a liquid cooling system in a pc.
As I mentioned b4 though, a wc system should cool all the components, cpu,gpu, nb,sb, and in some cases the memory as well to be considered a true wc unit. I honestly don't recall where I read this, but it's all subjective to me.
Does it really matter? Not in my humble opinion, but it's not much of one as I'm still on the beginner's end of pcs.
If I've offended anyone, my apologies.

[AmuseMe]

There is water flowing through it cooling your CPU - its water cooling. No matter what people say is it still water-cooling - yes. Just let me live with my arrogance - I'll keep it away from here for now on :) Just to keep me out of trouble.

[b1lk1]

I've built many custom loops as well as reviewed many prebuild water loops. Water cooling is water cooling. To state that you have to assemble it yourself with risk to be real water cooling is pure ignorance. I guess those cars you drive are not real cars. The house you live in is not a real house. The food you eat is not real food. Cut it out people, the world does not need this kind of BS and if you can't get over yourselves then just don't post.

[Rison]

As stated before, when I think water cooling - I think of loops people build, design and maintain.

If I went to a friends house.. and they said "hey man, check out my water cooled rig" and I saw an H70.. i'd be laughing at them. Call me arrogant, but it's the same as someone putting a sewer pipe on a Honda civic and calling it a "sports car".

[_dangtx_]

call it 'an easy way out' of building and spending appropriately for a wc setup :)

[JohnHenery]

It still is water cooling how else do you think the heat is removed from the cpu by the H5/70? water cooling needs liquid, pump, rad, and tubing last time I checked the H5/70 has all those things. I will agree that it's not really a step into water cooling because you are setting nothing up everything was done for you except installation.

[MonsterSound]

I for one am disappointed with the H70. Bottom line, it barely cools better than the H50 and costs ~$50 more ($60 vs. $102).

Their engineering seems oddly misplaced that they decided to focus on building a smaller pump assembly. This is mildly interesting but unnecessary as I don't think I heard anyone complaining about the size of the H50 pump. Meanwhile the new wide rad is bulky enough to restrict the airflow in a top mounted power supply configuration (like mine) and seems to require greater air/fan pressure to cool effectively.

I was hoping Corsair would improve the pump flow rate and increase the size of the tubing as I suspected that’s what would significantly improve its ability to dissipate heat . (but what do I know?).
Better cooling is really what I want.

I'll stick with the H50 for now as it is quiet and adequately cools (barely) an OC 24/7 folding, but "real" WC still seems to be the only way to get those temps way down.

p.s. yes I know the closed-loop H50/70 type setup is really a WC setup, but for lack of words, it's not in the same league as a custom loop.
p.p.s. doh, forgot to mention XLNT Review & Thanks

[dosmond]

well I think it looks sweet, but I'm also wondering if anyone has tried mounting it outside of the case instead of inside, and running it with fans blowing air outside instead of inside... I was eying the coolit eco or the h50 also, and the price drop for the h50 makes it very interesting to me. I think the cheapest I've seen it listed is at $56... Is the h70 really worth that price difference.... and is it enough of a performance difference to justify getting the h70 and bypassing the coolit and h50 altogether?

[JohnHenery]

The reason they needed to make the pump smaller was because of the thickness of the rad plus 2 fans. If they would have kept the size of the pump on the H50 it would hit the pump and I don't think it would fit unless you mount one fan outside the case.