H60 first impressions

[Ging9]

Received my Corsair H60 last Friday and installed the same afternoon. Here are some thoughts on my first foray into water-cooling:

Installation was a breeze in my 600T. The only downside was with the backplate and one of the four corner-mounted mounting screws. I was worried I was going to break the screw as I tried (unsuccessfully) to get it to tighten properly. The other three mounted tightly, but there was a little wiggle room with #4. Rather than push it too far, I left it as is.

Mounting the fan and radiator was relatively simple. Compared to air-cooling, securing a waterblock to a CPU is SO easy. It's nice to have room to maneuver and my RAM is no longer crowded against a heatsink tower. The flexible hoses had to be bent more than I thought they would be, but overall the setup was very easy and I was ready to roll in 20 mins.

Power-up was met with a slight gurgle as the liquid starting moving...then (almost) blessed silence. The loudest part of my system now is the cooler on my 560 GTX Ti. Idle temps are 29-32 degrees, if you can trust realtemp....I loaded the system with realtemp's stress test and with my 2500K running at 4.3 ghz, temps didn't go any higher than 44 degrees. Mind you, I only ran the "stress test" for about 20 mins.

So was it a worthwhile upgrade over my Hyper 212 plus? Jury's out actually. I like the fact there's less stress on the motherboard and more "breathing room" for my RAM modules. Temps aren't much different than air. Noise levels are better, but the 212 was hard to hear over the video card's fans as well. I think I have more headroom now to up the clocks on my 2500K. For a $65 investment, I think the upgrade was worth it.

[enaberif]

You have to make sure ALL 4 screws are secured or you won't get proper contact.

With that said you need to tighten these in a criss-cross pattern till they are all starting to screw into the backplate. then you just keep rotating around while tightening each one a little bit.

This will insure a good contact.

I've seen i7 2600ks running @ 30 idle on these guys and just shy of 60 on load stock of course.

And these self enclosed water loops are really nothing more than a good air cooler with less noise ;)

[slippy]

Thanks for the first impressions. I'm leading towards this as my first all-in-one watercooling too...when my budget allows

[Ging9]

I think I have pretty solid contact given the temps. The hand-tightened screws are all as tight as I can make them. The problem I was talking about involved one of the anchors not threading properly into the backplate. I think if I tried to force it it would snap.

The cooler is very quiet and when I touch the radiator, it's actually quite cool to the touch. Overall I'm quite happy with the purchase. Taking that giant tower heatsink off my motherboard was the clincher.

[BrutalGreen]

Originally Posted by enaberif

And these self enclosed water loops are really nothing more than a good air cooler with less noise ;)

actually they tend to perform worse and be louder than similarly priced air coolers, only advantage I see to them is when you cant fit a big air cooler in SFF builds!

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by BrutalGreen

actually they tend to perform worse and be louder than similarly priced air coolers, only advantage I see to them is when you cant fit a big air cooler in SFF builds!

I haven't used any of the large heatsinks as of late..

But I had a 2600k overclocked to 4.5ghz with a H70 and temps were nice and noises was low.

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by BrutalGreen

actually they tend to perform worse and be louder than similarly priced air coolers, only advantage I see to them is when you cant fit a big air cooler in SFF builds!

Depends on too many factors to really list.

I can honestly say though that my H50 and Eco's have done better even if slightly to the coolers they have replaced. The noise went down some , and even more once I swapped out some fans for my own personal ones. What really clinches it for me is the same thing as the OP. I don't have a massive Tower Cooler hanging overtop my RAM (so therefore I can remove modules and add at my leisure) and an overall quieter experience.

ST

[Ging9]

Just out of curiousity, when you say you swapped out fans, what did you go with?

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by Ging9

Just out of curiousity, when you say you swapped out fans, what did you go with?

I've done multiple swaps (I have two Eco's, an H50, and H70).

For the ECO's I opted to go with the Silverstone Penetrators. Very nice Fan if you ignore the cost .

On my H50 and 70 I popped on R4's from Coolermaster. They actually don't make as much noise on a Rad as they do when mounted on the PLexi or Lexan of a Side panel. So they tend to be fairly well mannered.

If you really want to bring the silence you can grab some GELID fans, they are nice and silent. Nexus or Zalman have a few types that work as well.
The main thing to remember is that with most (Not all) fans you will sacrifice some performance (or gain some) depending on the speed and static pressure it has.

And we all perceive noise differently, and cases ressonate sound differently.

My thoughts,

ST

[Eluder]

I am actually currently thinking of picking up the H60 as a replacement for the 212+ as well, but on a 2600k at 4.5GHz.
I am running the 212+ with 2x Noctua NF-P12's in a push/pull config and it is pretty darn quiet, don't think I can hear it over the other fans in the system.
The 212+ doesn't block any of my DIMMs on my board, so no benefit in going to the H60 from that perspective, but I was hoping for improved cooling with the H60 with similar noise.
I would move the 2x Noctua's to the H60 (does the H60 support 2 fans?), but do you think it would be worth it?