Corsair H100i Liquid CPU Cooler Review

Corsair’s H100i is coming to the UK market at an impressive £90 and is hitting the North American market at USD$119.99. In context, this makes the Corsair H100i roughly £30-40 (50%~) more expensive than a top-of-the-line air heatsink like a Dark Rock Pro 2 or NH-D14. However, you are getting a lot of extra performance for your money and you won’t feel short changed at all as a result of this extra performance.

Before we get into what we liked about the Corsair H100i it is important for us to summarise some of the negatives we have with the product. Firstly, I had some quite irritating issues with the mounting kit. Some of the screws bend under strong tightening, as a result you can damage the mounting kit or even break it if you tighten things a lot. The blame for this doesn’t necessarily lay directly with Corsair or with the consumer, I guess both share part of the blame but the fact Corsair do not warn you in the manual means they should probably take some initiative and update that. Everyone wants a secure mount and you don’t expect screws to bend or snap when you tighten them as far as they will go, you just expect them to stop, the fact they bend is not acceptable. My second issue comes with the H100i’s radiator/fan whining, I commend Corsair greatly for fixing the rattling issue that was present on earlier versions of the H100i but the whining issue in the radiator is still present and even after applying all updates it did not get fixed for me. This isn’t a deal-breaker for me because the noise is still quite low, however it is something that should have been improved. Thirdly, Corsair only include 8 fan screws, meaning if you want to add a second set of fans for push-pull then you need to go out and acquire them – this isn’t a huge issue but it is common place these days to see a lot of companies bundle additional fan brackets/ screws with products that have room for additional fans. Finally, the bundled fans are very nice but I would of liked to see 4 pin PWM connections not 3 pin connections. This is because I know a handful of systems may have issues with getting the Corsair Link software running properly for whatever reason and if you cannot get Corsair Link working then you cannot adjust your fans. This is a minor issue since less than 1% of systems will probably experience issues and Corsair’s support team would help you find a solution anyway, but it is still a minor issue nonetheless – I doubt it would of cost Corsair much to make the fans 4 pin.

Now on to what we liked. There are a lot of things because the Corsair H100i is an overwhelmingly good product. Firstly as our tests show, the performance is fantastic. If you are looking for the best cooling solution without getting a fully fledged water cooling loop then you need look no further than the Corsair H100i. It will handle more or less anything you throw at it, and if you need more performance then you can add more fans and get even better performance. Next we were very impressed with the quality of the H100i, it is a really well built product – particularly the improved pump and tubing. The rubber tubing is brilliant because it is so manageable and flexible that you will not encounter any issues with it. The pump is also impressive because it is totally silent, I know a few H100 users had issues with pump noise in the past but the H100i clearly eliminates that problem as it is totally silent. The included Corsair fans are excellent, you have a wide PWM range all the way up to 2700 RPM and they are designed from the ground up for use with radiators generating high static pressure. The Corsair link software is the icing on the cake as it allows you to adjust and control all features of your product, most notably the RGB LED system which is a very nice touch from Corsair and one of the first (possibly the first) implementation(s) of this on liquid CPU coolers.

If you are looking for the best of the best in CPU cooling then you will not find a better solution than the Corsair H100i without spending multiple hundreds on custom built water cooling loops. The Corsair H100i is not a perfect or flawless product, but it isn’t that far off and it is one of the best, if not the best, in its market segment. You get excellent performance, high quality parts and build quality and the beauty of the all in one liquid cooling form factor. The Corsair Link software is the deal sweetener for me because the ability to tweak the fan speeds, the pump speeds and the LED colours is what every enthusiast wants. The few minor drawbacks of this product aren’t enough to stop us from recommending this.

The Corsair H100i is not a low cost product, but it is actually well priced for what it is. Due to the fact this product targets a niché market we think it is most appropriate to award the Corsair H100i with our Extreme Performance Award because the H100i offers exactly that, at an attractive price point, and with a boat load of functionality.