Corsair H70 - Thermal/Acoustic Performance (3.33GHz)

For our first test we record the temperatures produced by the coolers when our system is idle and fully loaded. The load was applied by Prime95 and temperatures are measured using Realtemp and Everest to access the CPUs various Digital Thermal Sensors.

Fan control was disabled in the motherboard BIOS, the Vantage was set to Extreme mode and the 980X CPU is running at its stock speed/voltage. Room temperature was 20°C.

Looking at the performance of the H70 when compared to the H50 we see that Corsair have managed to significantly improve on the performance offered by the older model. This is the case at both idle, where the H70 is 3°C cooler and load which shows a 10°C reduction in temperature on the H70; quite an achievement. Looking next to the comparison with the Vantage we must remember that the CoolIT model is designed to regulate temperatures and fan speed at a pre-defined level. At stock CPU settings this means an RPM of approximately 2000 for a load temperature 6-9°C higher than the H70. Moving next to a high performance air cooler, the massive Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme, we can see that the difference in load temperature is huge with Corsairs model having a 15°C advantage over the air based model.

Noise levels also vary from cooler to cooler. The H50 with its 1600RPM fan is quiet when running at full RPM as all fans (other than the Vantage) were for our testing. The H70 on high is loudest of all, however only 1dBA above the Vantage at this setting.