Corsair iCUE H115i RGB ELITE Liquid CPU Cooler (16 Dynamic
Corsair iCUE H115i RGB ELITE Liquid CPU Cooler (16 Dynamic RGB LEDs, 140mm AF ELITE Series FDB Fans, 280mm Radiator, iCUE Software Compatible – LGA 1700, 1200, 115X, 2066, and AM4 Sockets) Black
| Weight: | 1.05 kg |
| Dimensions: | 32.2 x 14 x 2.7 cm; 1.05 Kilograms |
| Brand: | Corsair |
| Model: | CW-9060059-WW |
| Colour: | Black |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | Corsair |
| Dimensions: | 32.2 x 14 x 2.7 cm; 1.05 Kilograms |
Pros:
With a focus on cooling and less on RGB, the CPU cooler performs well, so far. The pump housing is aesthetically pleasing with soft round fillets and mild RGB accent – a nice balance. Someone with taste designed this one. This is unlike the prior generations or the current Capellix RGB Gamer-Gaming Bling versions in your face.
The 240 mm radiator is compatible with Corsair Vengeance DDR5 none-RGB RAM modules in a Corsair 4000D. There is about 3 mm of clearance between the RAM and the rad fan(s).
Cons:
> Corsairs proprietary fan cabling/wiring is messy for wire management. If wire management is not your thing than you have no problems.
> And having to install and mess around with the unintuitive iCue software, just to make the singular RGB light go to a color I want. Then to check a dozen times to see if the profile took over or not under the hardware settings. I still don’t actually known what I did differently that it finally uploaded the lighting profile to the hardware. And finally, uninstall the iCue.
I don’t know why iCue cannot work as simply as the SSD Tookit from Corsair, but it does not. Every time, it’s a struggle, whether it’s for a keyboard or a mouse. Having bought Ducky keyboard and mouse recently, it was a breath of fresh air to be able to control the RGB set-up thru the hardware only, no silly software. [Ducky’s latest full size keyboards with swappable switches are awesome.]
Works great, sounds great, lovely. Easy install and cools very well for I7 13gen!
Arrived on time and well packaged. Can’t wait to see it working
i needed an AMD adapter bracket to slot this into the motherboard. luckily i had it on hand, but that could screw someone up badly.
it comes with Intel brackets.
This was worth the price and has cooled my cpu a lot better than my old cooler. Due to my dumbness i took 2 hours trying to figure out how to install the radiator but I eventually got there. Tip: make sure the radiator is on top of the two rubber things that go into the cpu cooler.
thank you corsair for making high quality products
Fitted to a MSI X570a-Pro mainboard with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU. At the time of writing on a low load the CPU is sitting at 33C.
I was initially sceptical about how good this would be I was running a heavy duty fan and heatsink, but the 5800x was still running hot, staying in the high 60s even without a heavy load, so wanted something to bring that down.
The trickiest bit was the install, the instructions are not as good as they could be and I would recommend having at least a working knowledge of putting a PC together. The accessories for fitting the cooler to CPU are good, but you have to be aware of what furniture you have on your board in order to get it right. The radiator and fan take up a chunk of room, so smaller cases may have issues and make sure you know where you CPU and pump fan headers are in advance for cable routing.
Apart from that it is a really good cooling system for the price and I highly recommend it.
Great product, had a H60 AIO which died 4 days ago, this was ordered and delivered within 2 days. Biggest thing is the lack of temperature now, when my H60 was in working order it would maintain a reasonable level of cooling (43c at idle and 55c to 60c average under moderate load) now with this H100x I’m seeing 34c at idle and 42c under load, so fairly big gains. Depending on how the system is mounted, it can also help with air flow in the more restricted cases like mine (NZXT H510) and force a bit more air in to keep the pressure optimal so heat can be moved out easier.
My only complaint is that one of the mounting points on the radiator is completely cross threaded and is totally unusable, which I find extremely irritating as I like to make sure everything is tight and secure, hopefully this is just a single defect and not a model wide fault as I hold Corsair in high esteem for their product quality.
I have always reused old PC kit when upgrading, so I don’t have a fancy case that’s built to take one of these. I’d installed a Asus MBoard with an i7 cpu into this old case and it had been working fine for a few years until it started locking up and crashing. The after a lot of investigation, I discovered the cpu was overheating, probably due to the software build up over the years.
I wanted to get the double sized water cooler, but there’s not enough room in my case. So I settled for this and cut a hole in the top of the case to mount the rad and fan and it works very well.
I bought this cooler intending to fit it to an older desktop system. However, taking a serious look at my old system for the first time in a while, I came to the conclusion that it was time I replaced it.
I bought a new MSI X390 ACE , a CometLake i7 etc etc. I had some doubts about the H60 would fit and if it could do an adequate job. Upon checking, I found that the H60 was ok in the new system. It fitted easily – fitting it was, marginally, perhaps the easist part of my build!
The motherboard has a 7 segment temperature display. With the system idling – ie just running background processes – it reports the CPU temperature as 27 degrees C . The Piriform Speccy tool concurs with this.
I’ve never seen the CPU temperature rise above 40 degees C – and that was on a very hot day, with a large video file format conversion process running in the foreground.
My old PC -which had a Zalman cooler – could get to 65 C doing this sort of thing. Comprisons are unfair as I think the ComeLake i7 runs cooler than my old Sandybridge. Nevertheless, the cooling performance of the Hydo 60 impresses me considering the relatively low cost of the device.
The H100X is pretty straight-forward to install. People used to building PC’s or replacing air-coolers really shouldn’t have any issues – just check that you have space to mount the radiator and fans. I managed to top-mount mine within a compact Meshify C case.
Temperature-wise the H100X performs pretty-much identically to the Noctua NH-D14 when fans are set to silent (~800rpm). Turn them up and you’ll shave a few degrees off of the Noctua but both items are closely-matched.
Positives
*Easy to install – not much different than installing a tower cooler.
*No bloatware required. The H100X just does it’s thing without need for separate software.
*Allows full-view and access to your motherboard. RAM, fan headers, M.2 slots, graphics card release tab etc are all fully-accessible. .
*Similar price and performance to to top-end air coolers.
*6-year Corsair warranty.
Negatives
*Contains distilled water. There is a very-small risk of leaks, which may harm other components within your PC.
*The water-pump is an additional point of failure.
Summary
*Great alternative to bulk air-coolers. These offer similar / slightly better cooling performance, look better, and allow easier access to other components.
The cooling is absolutely fantastic. I have an old AM3 CPU that still had the subpar stock cooler installed and it reached the point where it was over 60 degrees while idle. Installed this cooler and with the fans at 100% RPM the CPU is now 35 degrees UNDER HEAVY LOAD. The only problem with that is at 100% the fans are extremely loud. I had to install 3rd party software (SpeedFan) to control the fan speed as I couldn’t control these fans directly through Windows or the BIOS. Reducing the speed to 50% makes them super quiet and still keeps the CPU below 45 degrees under heavy load, which is perfectly acceptable.
The only other thing to mention is that the cooler is actually bigger than I expected. The dimensions are probably listed so it’s my fault for not paying attention to that. Once you have installed the fans on the radiator, you’ve got a chunky piece of kit that you have to fit inside your case. I’d recently bought a new case of standard size, and I actually had to do some modifications with a saw (to the case, not the cooler/radiator) in order to make this fit. I stress though that that is not a failing of this product. Just make sure your case has the space for this before you purchase it as it’s perhaps larger than you’d think.
Bought this as I had the previous H60 version which I hoped would be a straight swap which it was.
The unit was very easy to install even with the chaotic wiring in my particular computer. The hardest thing I had to do was plug in the 2 connectors for the liquid cooling and fan which were in the the most inaccessible places on the mother board, but that’s not really the fault of corsair to be honest.
It would have been nice if the instructions gave a little more guidance on how to locate the connectors as there are about four possible connectors to choose from on a motherboard, I thankfully had the foresight to note where the previous cooler connectors were plugged in.
On boot up the inside of the computer was bathed in white light which I didn’t expect but is nice anyway. However the fan does make a fair bit of noise and stays on permanently, I found this a little annoying as the packaging makes a big thing about it being really quiet, this is not help by it triggering a resonance with my side cases side panel either which means I have to give it a kick once in a while, grrr! I can’t stand noise.
One thing to be aware of after installing the unit is that it takes a little while for it to effectively keep the processors cool, I believe this is because the thermal paste needs time to properly seal the components together probably through heat transference, so don’t be surprised by this. For me it took about 2 or 3 days of fair usage before the temperatures settled down to a normal level. It should still keep the processor cool enough to use without damage though from initial use.
Overall, I’m satisfied even if the fan is louder than expected.
The Corsair Hydro H60 would be a fairy easy fix on a new build (especially if you can get access to the underside of the motherboard) but it’s a little more difficult when it’s replacing an old cooling system.
I had hoped that the H60 would be compatible with the old Coolit fixing frame on the back of the motherboard, as it would have saved me the work of removing the motherboard. No such luck! Whilst the stud threads were the same, they were a bit longer on the Coolit which meant the H60 couldn’t be screwed down far enough to reach the CPU. So I had to remove the Coolit fixing frame (and the glue that attached it to the motherboard), as well as cleaning the old paste off the CPU.
After reassembly I was quite relieved when the computer booted up. I did have to tweak the fan monitoring warning threshold in the ASUS BIOS, to reduce it to below 600 RPM.
I obviously can’t yet comment on the longevity of the H60 but it seems to be at least as quiet as the Coolit, and I think the CPU runs a bit cooler (it idles under 40C).
This hardware was purchased to replace my old (2012) H60 cooler. Whoever put together this package did not consider the likelihood of someone having a slightly thicker casing than usual as the short bolts provided did not reach the radiator! Therefore I had to use the ones from my old H60 and even then they proved too long so they had to be packed out to ensure a tight fit to the casing. It took me a lot longer to fit the fan and radiator than I had anticipated and this was exacerbated by the difficulty of getting the bolts into the thread on the radiator- I assume because of enamel on the threads. My advice is to try the bolts into the rad’ before placing it inside the casing just to ease the process. The illustration in the manual shows 8 washers but I only got 4 in mine.
However the review is entitled “Read the Manual!” for a reason. Don’t assume like I did that the new H60 is just an updated version of the old one. A – it needs a Sata power connection for the pump/led (the old one didn’t) so make sure there is a spare connection – I used the bottom of a tee connector running from my psu to one of my harddrives. B- the old standoff rods are too long so no use leaving the previous models in situ just because they ‘look’ superficially the same. You need to replace each rod (one at a time unless you have easy access the back of your motherboard) with the new ones provided as they are slightly shorter and provide the snug fit required. I didn’t and wondered why my core temp was super-high. Using the old
spacing rods ensures the thermal compound is barely squished. I usually study manuals but made certain assumptions that caused me extra work.
The new cooler looks smart and seems slightly quieter than the old one.
Core temp averaging around 36
I should have knocked a star off due to the bolts being too short to secure the rad’ but didn’t.
It’s Summer, it’s hot, I’m hot, and the fact I’m playing games and my CPU temp is pushing 100 degrees C makes that worse. It wouldn’t help longevity either. So I decided to order the Corsair H100i V2 240mm. It arrived today, I unboxed it like a child at Christmas, and attached it to the computer as quickly as possible to give it a test. Very early impressions are excellent.
The installation into my LGA1151 socket was simple, couldn’t be any easier, and it all falls together nicely. I only have one real complaint about this aio system and it’s the fact that the pipes are stiff. It just feels like they don’t want to flex and I still don’t feel comfortable with it now. Upon testing I have found a significant reduction in temperatures. Of course, coming from a stock Intel cooler, it is obvious I’ll see such massive reductions.
Idle temp with Intel cooler: 40-50 degrees C.
Corsair Idle temp: 25-27 degrees C.
light/medium load Intel cooler: stayed around the 40-50 degree mark pushing 60 on medium loads.
Light/medium on Corsair H100i V2: Bouncing around 27-35 as the pump/fans continually adjust to the temps.
X-Plane 11 loading on Intel cooler: 100-101 degrees C.
X-Plane 11 loading Corsair H100i V2: 54 degrees C max.
I only tested that because X-Plane 11 really pushes hard when it’s loading the flight up. When the game has loaded the temp drops down to 35-40 degrees C on the Corsair H100i V2. On the Intel cooler it stayed at around 80 degrees C.
Previously, when I had my Intel Core i7 5930K, I used a Cooler Master V8. It was just an insanely large cooler and for all of that size it doesn’t match the performance of this. I got rid of it because of its size as it was pushing on my GPU and I had to take off the backplate and it was just a nightmare. Not worth it.
Just as a quick side-note to monitor the CPU temp I am using the debug LED on my motherboard. It’s quite accurate and is easy to see. I have the system plugged into the USB header on my mobo so I can control it via Corsair Link. I have set it all to performance mode, though I may customise it myself.
Just so people are aware, I do know 100 C is extremely bad, hence my order of this product.
Having owned this for about a week now, I thought I might leave a review and give some advice to those looking at getting a AIO liquid cooler. First let me say that this is my first water-cooler that I have ever installed, so with that in mind I want to highlight the following.
1. For those of you building a PC on a tight budget with not much care for aesthetics, I would go with an air cooler with a big heat-sink (e.g. Hyper Evo 212 or ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro) because if you stick a Noctua fan on there you’ll have a far quieter and probably better experience, for far less. However if you are like me and love the aesthetic that a water-cooler provides and hate big heat-sinks getting in the way of your RAM sticks and motherboard, then water-cooling is definitely the way to go.
2. The noise. These fans are very noisy at anything over 50% speed, and are small vacuum cleaner level at 100%. Corsair tell you in the manual to plug both fans into the cable coming off the pump housing, and then the cable that comes off that into the cpu fan header. This didn’t work for me because while running basic tasks the fans would ramp up to 100% sporadically which became very distracting. I started looking on forums and people were having similar issues. I read somewhere that the pump should stay at 100%, because this provides the best cooling and means less wear and tear on the pump (a changing load is much worse for it). To fix this I simply plugged the main cable that comes off the pump housing into the 3 pin water pump header on my motherboard (this stays at 100% all the time), and plugged in the two fans into CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT on my motherboard. Then I controlled them all using the fan controller in my UEFI BIOS to keep them both below 50% as much as possible.
3. With all that being said it really does keep my processor very cool – my core i7-6700k clocked at 4.7 GHz wasn’t going above 70*C and at idle it sits around 20 – 25*C depending on room temperature. I also like the RGB control of the corsair logo, which can be changed with corsair link software and configured to changed based on CPU temperature. I have mine on white most of the time and set to change to red when it goes over 70*C.
All in all a very good all in one closed loop cooler, but I have to knock off a star for the fan design. While they may be high static pressure fans and work well at pushing air through the radiators, they far too noisy at anything above 50%. Those who have their hearts set on this you have two options: A) Do what I outlined above, if your motherboard allows it -enough fan headers, fan control in UEFI BIOS- or B)You can swap the fans out for some quieter 120mm fans. Noctua NF-P12 PWM fans would probably be a good option, though brown doesn’t look too great in most builds.