Corsair H105 CPU Cooler Review
All in One (AIO) CPU Coolers are now more popular than their air cooled counterparts, this is because they generally offer better, quieter cooling thanks to the fact that they rely on water and not so much on airflow. Over the last few years Corsair has been refining their AIOs year on year and one of the most popular is the Corsair H105 (CW-9060016-WW).
This Corsair AIO features a 240mm radiator that’s approximately 38mm thick, it comes with two Corsair SP120L 120mm fans with a speed of between 800-2700RPM, providing 73CFM of air flow, while the fan outputs 38dB of noise.
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Hydro Series H105 provides extreme CPU cooling performance. The 240mm top-mounted high-capacity radiator is paired with high-performance SP120L fans for the powerful heat dissipation you need for highly overclocked CPUs. And, PWM fan speed fan control lets you select the precise level of cooling power you need.
Installation is easy, with an all-new mounting bracket that provides quick, tool-free assembly. The three included red, gray and blue accent rings let you match your H105 to your fan or motherboard color scheme. And, like all Hydro Series liquid CPU coolers, the H105 is completely self-contained, with no filling or maintenance required. |
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The Corsair H105 arrived at pcG in a smart predominately black box with a large image of the cooler on the front. As you can see from the front of the box the H105 forms part of Corsair’s Hydro Series and supports both Intel and AMD processors. Also according to the front of the box the H105 is an ‘EXTREME PERFORMANCE 240MM LIQUID CPU COOLER’. On the left side of the box we find a list of dimensions etc, while over on the right side we see a break down of what’s in the box.
The top of the box highlights some of the H105 main features as well as providing a comparison of the H105 to the Intel stock cooler using an overclocked Intel 3960X @ 4.6GHz. Strange comparison if you ask me as it’s a little like comparing a Ford Mondeo to a Bugatti Veyron! 😉 Also in the bottom left we find a list of supported Sockets and Processors, and on the right a set of images showing how the coloured accent ring can be swapped to various colours (grey, blue & red are provided).
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On opening the box we can see that the Corsair H105 is well packaged, with the Quick Start Guide taking centre stage. The cooler itself and its associated components are in Corsair’s familiar old fashioned egg carton style packaging (it must be eco friendly, I guess!).
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In the box other than the Cooler itself, we find x2 Corsair 120mm SP120L fans, a bag of mounting accessories and a Quick Start Guide.
The bag of mounting accessories contains an AMD mounting ring and Intel back-plate, various mounting screws and stand-offs for both Intel and AMD, a bag of radiator screws and washers (washers are always welcome!), a 4-pin fan splitter and a set of coloured accent rings.
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Shown above you can see the Quick Start Guide on the left and what is a rather interesting WARRANTY AGAINST DEFECTS (notification for Australian consumers) leaflet on the right!
At the time of review the Corsair H105 is retailing for approximately £89 on Ebuyer and comes with a mighty impressive 5 year warranty.
Specifications/Features
courtesy of Corsair
Package Contents
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Compatibility
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Technical Specifications
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Other
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* Additional details available here
First Impressions
First impressions are what one would expect really from a 240mm, dual 120mm fan All in One, there’s very little about the Corsair H105 to dislike that’s for sure…
As you can see our pump came pre-installed with the grey accent piece, I’ll be swapping it to red later to match the Test Rig setup. This is a nice touch that I like but, custom coloured lighting would be better! 😉 Although the Corsair logo and name do illuminate (white) when powered on. What’s also good to see is the use of rubber tubing and rotating fittings, as this always helps to get those tubes where you want them.
Looking at the other side of the pump (with the protective cover removed) we can see the Corsair H105’s copper cold-plate and the fact that it comes with Thermal Paste pre-installed (that we will be using!).
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The radiator itself is 272.5mm (L) x 120mm (W) x 38mm (D) and is mounted with eight screws (effectively 4 per fan). Eight long fan screws and eight short screws are provided along with sixteen washers. Always nice to see lots of mounting hardware allowing the H105 to be mounted in almost any case/situation…
The two fans provided are Corsair SP120L 120mm fans, these PWM controlled fans feature a high Static Pressure as well as a high RPM (up to 2700).
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At this point it all looks good and sounds good for the Corsair H105, let’s get it installed and then see how she runs…
Hardware Installation
| Case |
Cooler Master HAF XB
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Power Supply |
Corsair Professional Series AX 760i
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| Motherboard |
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer
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CPU |
Intel Core i5-4690K
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| CPU Cooler | Corsair H105 | RAM |
HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
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| Graphics Card |
XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition
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SSD |
HyperX FURY 120GB
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The first task for installing the Corsair H105 was to ascertain what components I would require for our socket 1150 installation. Information supplied in the Quick Start Guide was clear; I would need the Intel backplate, x4 LGA 115X standoffs, x4 thumbscrews, the bag of radiator screws (as not too sure which ones I’m going to use!), the fan y-splitter and finally that all important Red accent ring!
Installation of the CPU bracket was easy; place the bracket on the back of the motherboard and align the protrusions with the holes in the motherboard (not forgetting that the position of the protrusion can be moved!). Then secure the backplate from the other side of the motherboard using the four standoffs. That’s the first task done…
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The next task was to fit the radiator and the two 120mm fans. I decided to place the radiator on the inside of the case and the fans on the outside (see images below). This was done by threading the screws through the fan, through the case and into the radiator on the other side, using the eight long radiator screws provided.
With that done the next task was to fit the pump, this was made easy by the fact Corsair has already covered the cold-plate in thermal paste. It was just a case of lining up the pump, paying close attention to the orientation of the tubing, and sliding the pump’s mounting bracket over the standoffs, then holding the pump down while you secure the assembly with the four thumbscrews.
The final task is one of wiring, with the fans (via the Y-Splitter) and the pump itself requiring power. The use use of either 3-pin or 4-pin(PWM) headers on your motherboard is supported. Of course if you connect the fans to a 3-pin header you’ll not be able to use the PWM control that controls fan speed depending on CPU temperature. I fitted the pump to Chassis CHA_FAN2 and the fans to CPU_FAN1 aboard our test ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer motherboard.
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Job Done! Easy it was too, with the whole process of fitting taking approximately 15 minutes. Oh and by the way to change that accent piece, you need to lever off the grey one with a screwdriver, just be careful… 😉
Testing Methodology/Setup
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For CPU Cooler testing, we here at pcGameware run Prime95 for a 15 minute period. During this period the temperature is monitored with CoreTemp and the cooling performance recorded (the max recorded is the average for all cores). Between each stress test we allow a 15 minute cool-down to allow for more accurate results. To adjust the fan speed we simply use the UEFI. A close eye is also kept on the ambient temperature, with the maximum being recorded for each run, this allows us to calculate the Delta temperature (Core – Ambient = Delta). Each run was performed with the Intel Core i5-4690K CPU at the following frequencies: 3.5GHz (Stock) and 4.0GHz (using the ASROCK OC Tweaker, shown in the picture below), all results have been recorded with CPU-Z. |
* Please note: To ascertain the maximum and minimum noise levels produced by our CPU test coolers. The dB is recorded at a distance of 1 metre from the cooler, with all case fans unplugged to isolate the sound in question.
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Processor speed is set using the OC Tweaker tab of the UEFI, “Disabled” for stock speeds (3.5GHz) and “Turbo 4.0GHz” for the minor overclock tests. It should be noted that changing the OC settings resets the Fan Speeds, so these are checked on the next reboot and reset to “Full Speed” (see below).
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All the fans installed in the system are set to 100% speed using the displayed settings, this is simple with the ASROCK UEFI with the option of “Full Speed” being available for all system fans (bar the Power Supply Fan header).
 CPU-Z – Corsair H105 – 3.5GHz (fans @ 100%) |
 CPU-Z – Corsair H105 – 4.0GHz (fans @ 100%) |
Hardware Performance
As stated above, to make our performance tests easier to follow and to get the most accurate recordings, all of the following tests have been carried out with case fans set at 100% and the Corsair H105’s fans also set at 100%.
- Intel Core i5-4690K – 3.5GHz (stock)
 Noctua NH-D15 – Prime95 – 3.5GHz (fans @ 100%) |
 Corsair H105 – Prime95 – 3.5GHz (fans @ 100%) |
 Reeven Hans – Prime95 – 3.5GHz(fans @ 100%) |
| CPU Cooler | Fan Speed | Ambient Temperature | Max CPU Temperature (core average) | Delta Temperature | Noise Level |
| Noctua NH-D15 | 100% | 25.00 | 44.75 | 19.75 | 44dB |
| Corsair H105 | 100% | 23.00 | 46.75 | 23.75 | 60dB |
| Reeven Hans | 100% | 26.00 | 51.50 | 25.50 | 34dB |
| Scythe Mugen Max | 100% | 22.00 | 48.50 | 26.50 | 36dB |
| Raijintek Themis Evo | 100% | 21.50 | 47.50 | 26.00 | 37dB |
| Noctua NH-U9S | 100% | 24.00 | 50.00 | 26.00 | 38dB |
| Raijintek Themis | 100% | 21.50 | 50.75 | 29.25 | 47dB |
| Noctua NH-D9L | 100% | 25.00 | 55.75 | 30.75 | 33dB |
| CRYORIG C1 | 100% | 23.00 | 56.25 | 33.25 | 42dB |
| SilverStone Argon AR06 | 100% | 23.50 | 79.50 | 56.00 | 28dB |
As one would expect from a 240mm AIO Cooler, the Corsair H105 performs extremely well, although surprisingly it still can’t quite match the performance of the massive Noctua NH-D15. But with those fans set at 100% (that’s 2700RPM) the noise output is colossal at 60dB!
- Intel Core i5-4690K – 4.0GHz (OC Tweaker)
 Noctua NH-D15 – Prime95 – 4.0GHz (fans @ 100%) |
 Corsair H105 – Prime95 – 4.0GHz (fans @ 100%) |
 Reeven Hans – Prime95 – 4.0GHz (fans @ 100%) |
| CPU Cooler | Fan Speed | Ambient Temperature | Max CPU Temperature (core average) | Delta Temperature | Noise Level |
| Noctua NH-D15 | 100% | 24.00 | 52.50 | 28.50 | 44dB |
| Corsair H105 | 100% | 23.00 | 53.50 | 30.50 | 60dB |
| Reeven Hans | 100% | 25.00 | 59.25 | 34.25 | 34dB |
| Scythe Mugen Max | 100% | 22.00 | 57.25 | 35.25 | 36dB |
| Raijintek Themis Evo | 100% | 21.50 | 58.00 | 36.50 | 37dB |
| Noctua NH-U9S | 100% | 23.50 | 60.25 | 36.75 | 38dB |
| Raijintek Themis | 100% | 21.00 | 59.50 | 38.50 | 47dB |
| Noctua NH-D9L | 100% | 24.50 | 67.00 | 42.50 | 33dB |
| CRYORIG C1 | 100% | 23.00 | 65.75 | 42.75 | 42dB |
| SilverStone Argon AR06 | 100% | 23.50 | 92.50 | 69.00 | 28dB |
Upping the ante to 4.0GHz @ 1.156v loads the cooler even more and allows the H105 to shine! But still it can’t match the cooling prowess of the Noctua NH-D15, although it easily bests all of the other air coolers tested. But there’s that noise, so let’s talk about the acoustics shall we…
OK, so the Corsair H105 uses x2 120mm 2700RPM fans and with them both at full speed (as we use in testing) the noise output is a whopping 60dB, too noisy (even for me while Gaming with a headset on!). But Of course this fan speed can be controlled via the UEFI, either using voltage via a 3-pin fan header, or via PWM control using a 4-pin fan header. With this in mind I went about trying to find a happy medium (of course you’ll probably have your own); but with the pump at 1600RPM and the fans at 1500RPM the noise output was a far more reasonable at 40dB. At these settings the average CPU Core temperature was 56.25C (as opposed to 53.50C), which is still pretty impressive and it still sees the H105 holding onto second place in the 4.0GHz overclocked test!
Final Thoughts
All in One CPU Coolers have come a long way in the last couple of years and the Corsair H105 is a testament to that; it’s easy to install, it performs well, but you will need to tame those 2700RPM fans…
The Corsair H105 came well packaged with all of its contents protected by that very eco friendly, egg carton style packaging. Once out of the box, the radiator/pump assembly looked good and appeared to be well made. The pump utilises rotating fittings and comes with a good deal of flexible rubber tubing. Then there’s the rather nice touch of being able to change the pump’s central accent piece (grey, blue & red are provided).
Fitting the Corsair H105 in our Test Rig was incredibly easy, thanks to the simple fittings used, total install time for bracket, radiator, fans and pump was only around 15 minutes. It doesn’t tend to come much easier than this and to be honest AIOs are now almost easier to fit than air based CPU Coolers.
Once installed it was time to do some performance testing, and in the area of performance the H105 didn’t disappoint. Coming second in both tests (3.5GHz & 4.0GHz) with temperatures of 46.75C (Delta 23.75C) and 53.50C (Delta 30.50C) respectively. But this performance came at a high cost and that cost was noise, as with the two Corsair SP120L 2700RPM fans at 100% the noise output was a whopping 60dB! Luckily the UEFI came to the rescue and by setting the pump at 1600RPM (as this emits a hum also when on high) and the fans at 1500RPM I was able to reduce the noise to 40dB, while still retaining a low average core temperature of 56C, now that’s more impressive!
Overall the Corsair H105 is an impressive AIO CPU Cooler, but it’s one that needs to be setup to your own personal preference when it come to the Performance/Noise equation, and that just might take a little time…
Verdict
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Many thanks to Corsair for providing this sample for review
