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Corsair COOL


Date
: 01/10/06 – 01:18:50 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: Corsair

Price
: ~175 – 180 depending on model

Corsair does not need any introduction when it comes time to review their products. There's probably nothing you already don't know about them!

Or maybe there is something you don't know about this memory giant; perhaps the fact that memory is not the only product they engineer. Corsair, in fact, has a product in the cooling department. Believe it or not, this is not the first one either! Not too long ago they introduced
COOL
to the world. This is a CPU watercooling kit that only requires your time and your water to get going.

Without any further ado, I present to you
COOL by Corsair
.

Page 2 : Package

The Corsair COOL arrived at my place in one of the largest boxes I've ever received. The packaging box was close to 24"x24"x24" and packed with Styrofoam peanuts. Buried somewhere in the box was COOL by Corsair. After shoveling out the peanuts, here is what the packaging box looks like:

As you can see from the image above, Corsair has designed the box to make it both appealing and informative. The front of the package shows you the processors the cooler supports and some pictures of the components inside. Depending on what you order, you may not get support for every component. From left to right we have the 120mm radiator, a CPU retention mechanism, the bottom of the pump, the base of the CPU waterblock, the nozzles on the waterblock, the radbox used to mount the radiator anywhere you want and, of course, the Corsair logo.

Taking a look at the backside of the box, there are more descriptive pictures of the components inside:

This picture actually gives you a bit more information as the names for each component are given. Now you know exactly what you're looking at. You will notice that there are four retention mechanisms which allows you to keep the same cooling kit
if
you upgrade between certain processors.

The sides of the box not only include individual pictures of the components, but also a little blurb describing the piece.

Don't squint your eyes to read the descriptions, we'll have it made available to you on the next page.

Sliding out the cardboard box, there's absolutely nothing on it since it's covered by the cardboard cover you've already seen in the above photos.

Page 3 : Description & Specifications

Before we get into the detailed description of the kit, we'll start by listing the models offered by Corsair.

Make sure you purchase the model your system supports.

This is what Corsair has to say about the COOL by Corsair:

As promised, here is the description of the components:

There are some rather interesting properties that come with the COOL by Corsair. A few that are worth mentioning include the fact that the tubing is 3/8" ID. The 3/8" tubing will make it easier for the tubing to be routed, but also give the water a higher velocity when hitting the 240 copper pinned CPU waterblock.

Let's move onto the next page where we'll go over each individual component.

Page 4 : Package Contents

Opening up the white box, the first and only thing we see is an installation guide and a CD resting on top of a very large block of black sponge.

There certainly isn't a lot here and it'll stay like this until you lift out the first layer of protective sponge. As you see below, the first layer includes the fan, reservoir and radiator.

With all the sponge around it, there's absolutely no way you will open up the box and find a damaged component. As you can guess, three components do not make up the entire cooling kit. The rest of the components are stored below this layer.

There is a sheet of cardboard separating the two sections. This ensures the components won't accidentally get crushed if it arrives with a special footprint on the box.

Combining the components of these two layers, you get a watercooling kit that only requires your time and water; distilled water of course!

Let's take a look at each of the individual components starting with the 120mm fan.

This 120mm fan will be doing all of the cooling work. While you can attempt to create a passively cooled system, it is certainly not advised. This 120mm fan claims to offer superior performance at low noise. We'll see if it is true later in this review. The fan is made by TEi and has the model number
TD1238-L-12-BPL-CM
. Here are the key features reported by TEi:

One of the things Corsair has done was shrink wrap the wires on the fan. They have also created a custom molex that can be powered through a special expansion slot. You'll see this a little later in the review.

The next part we'll look at is the radiator. This is the famous Black Ice Radiator manufactured by Hardware Labs. I can't tell off the top of my head whether or not this is the Pro of Xtreme model, but both of them have been proven to be excellent performers.

Like the name suggests, the radiator is black but you can see the copper color between the fins. The barbs are designed to go with the 3/8" ID tubing. By not using 1/2" fittings on the radiator, Corsair eliminates the need for converters which can cause flow restriction.

Moving onto the reservoir, this is a specially designed "high flow" piece of equipment. The different compartments ensure the fluid does not immediately go into the reservoir and right back out. With the raised partitions, it should make bleeding a tad easier.

The fill port is tucked away at the corner and can be opened by unscrewing the cap.

There are two barbs located on the reservoir and one capped off end that can be used as a second return line.

Corsair provides a bottle of additive that is to be used in your system. The instructions state that the whole bottle is to be used. The consistency of the fluid is rather thick and has the appearance of antifreeze. Replacement bottles cost about 13 USD dollars at various enthusiast stores.

Our evaluation kit came with all four mounting kits, though depending on the model you buy, you will only get two.

Depending on the model you get, you will either receive the 775 and socket A mounts or the Socket 478 and the K8. You will also get different waterblocks depending on what you buy.

Accompanying the various mounts are a bag of clips, bolts, washers and thermal pastes. There is also a special expansion bracket that allows you to wire the tubes out of your case and power the fan mounted on the RadBox.

Here's a picture of the RadBox:

The last two components we're going to look at before installing is the pump and the waterblock. Corsair uses a Laing Delphi DC Pump.

It is incredibly small for a pump with a base length of less than 2.5"! It's not size that matters, but performance. So here are the specifications.

By the looks of the specifications, we'll probably have something shy of 100 GPM; probably 90 to 95GPM.

The pump labels which nozzle is the input and which is the output.

The bundle of cables is for powering the pump and reporting the RPM to your motherboard.

It's not necessary to plug the RPM sensor into your motherboard. I'm not even sure how it's possible on the pump or what it is reporting, but it's there so you can utilize it as a safety feature. If the RPM reads 0, you should immediately shut down your system and locate the source of the error. It could make the difference between a working PC or a fried one.

Packaged with the pump are several feet of tubing and sleeving to prevent kinking of the tubes. It is advised to sleeve the tubing on the waterblock.

Last but not least are the waterblocks wrapped in a foam bag for protection.

Each base is protected by a sticker to prevent scratching during transporting.

Removing the sticker reveals a very flat surface without much shine.

Now that we've gone through all the parts, it's time to install everything and get wet!

Page 5 : Installation

Before we begin, the first thing you want to do is read over the installation guide. This is provided to you on the CD. As a matter of fact, you'll want to print this out so you can refer to it while installing the components.

The first step in the installation procedure was to put together the RadBox. I threaded the bolts through the 120mm grill through the RadBox shell and through the 120mm fan.

A small bit of the bolt should stick past the fan.

With this tiny bit hanging out, I placed it over the radiator, pushed down and threaded it into the radiator. I had to push down pretty hard to get the bolt to bit into the fan mount, but be careful not to push too hard or you might puncture the radiator fins.

The next step is to mount the other half of the RadBox to your case and secure the radiator and fan to it. Since I wasn't planning on installing the COOL by Corsair into a case, I've omitted these steps.

With my RadBox ready, it was time to lay out the tubing and decide where everything would go. In my experience, I have always started with the pump expelling the fluid into the radiator which led to the waterblock. From the waterblock, the tubing would go up to the reservoir and then back down to the pump. The reservoir is always the highest point in the loop and the pump is always at the lowest. This helps in removing the air bubbles in the system. Now that I know how I'm going to setup the system, I began by secure the waterblock onto the socket. I'm using the K8 mounting equipment, so your procedure will be different than mine if you use a different platform.

With the Corsair mounting equipment, you don't need to remove the motherboard as it uses all the stock equipment. Simply thread the plate in and tighten the spring loaded bolts until they don't go in any further.

Once the CPU waterblock was in place, I laid out the rest of the components so I could figure out how long the tubes had to be. Here's a picture of what everything looked like before I filled:

There are no quick connect fittings on this kit, and instead you must use the provided clamps that you squeeze to seal the joint. These are tool free to use, which is a step up over the metal o-clamps.

I also plugged in the TEi fan. The sleeved power connector off the fan plugs into the special expansion bracket which plugs into a normal 4-pin molex connector.

I began filling the system by first emptying the additive into the reservoir and filling it with distilled water. Once it was full, I tilted the radiator, pump and motherboard to get all the air out. I thought it would be wise to fire up the pump and bleed out the system with the fill port cap open; that was a stupid mistake as a bit of fluid shot out of the reservoir leaving a small mess around it. Lucky for me, no damage was done. Once I got all the air out, I let the pump run without powering on the system to check for any leaks.

After a couple hours of leak testing, it was time to do the actual performance testing.

Page 6 : Performance

Here's a list of the components used for testing:

We'll begin this section by focusing on the fan. The TEi moves a lot of air, but is by no means quiet. You can hear the air move, which is better than a high pitch whining noise some fans make. I certainly would have preferred to see an ADDA fan which is both quiet and powerful.

The pump itself gets warm and will add some heat to the water, however since the loop is setup such that the pump expels the fluid to the radiator, it won't be a very big problem.

The most important aspect of watercooling is superior performance. To test out the performance I ran Prime 2004 for 6 hrs and recorded the CPU and System temperature before shutting down Prime. I then let the system idle for another 6 hrs before recording the CPU and System temperature for the idle state.

COOL by Corsair has the lowest load CPU temperature when compared to all of the other coolers. While the difference isn't too big with my 3200+, it only gets better when you use a higher end processor that requires more wattage. When I used my Opteron 146 CAB2E, the load temperature was 45°C after three hours of prime 2004, but the Golden Orb II let it roast at 55°C! A large difference of
10°C
which will result in a lot more overclocking headroom when trying to get your Opteron 144/146 over the 3Ghz barrier!

Keep in mind that my results do not have the system installed in a case, but with adequate air flow, we can expect the motherboard temperature to also drop when using the COOL by Corsair.

Page 7 : Conclusion

Watercooling is not a new conception, but making watercooling simpler for novices has always been something manufacturers strove for. Corsair has designed a kit that is simple to use and offers performance that beats some of the top air coolers on the market. If you feel the need to watercool the rest of your system, Corsair offers both ATI and nVidia universal GPU waterblocks and chipset waterblocks.

For Corsair's second attempt at watercooling, they've done a fabulous job. This doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Many people who attempt watercooling do so to eliminate noise. The TEi does not accomplish that, and worst of all the propriety connector used on the expansion bracket doesn't make customization any easier; It's possible, just not easy. I would love to see an included fan controller or a fan made by the likes of ADDA.

While watercooling is not a common way of cooling your PC, with today's Socket 939 Opteron processors and dual core processors that tend to be smoking hot, you can expect more people will be buying watercooling kits like this. This entry kit will serve many people well, especially since it costs much less than some of the equipment offered by Asetek or Swiftech. By selecting Corsair, you not only get a chance to match the blinging LED memory modules, but you get a name enthusiasts trust.

For the excellent price for the performance Corsair has offered to us, this kit receives the
Overclockers Online
Budget Award. It makes watercooling simple and affordable while not sacrificing performance.

Advantages

Excellent performance on high end and hot processors
Small components will allow for fitting in tiny cases
Upgradeable to add GPU and NB waterblocks

Disadvantages

No fan controller to cut down on noise
Easy tube clamps but not quick connect fittings

Overclockers Online would like to thank Corsair for making this review possible.