Corsair CWCH100 Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance CPU Cooler

This is one cracking cooler, Im actually gobsmacked how good it is.

Before I had the H100 hydro, my setup was as follows.

AMD 1100T cpu running at 4.2ghz @1.45v with a CoolerMaster Hyper 212+, in a push/pull setup.
At idle the cpu would sit at 26c and at 100% load it would climb upto 51c.

Now with the H100 hydro on the same cpu with the same settings, the temps have dropped.
Much more than I hoped for, at idle it sits at 16c and at 100% load it climbs upto 36c.

I highly recommend the product, for the price its the best bang for your money.

[Brought from Amazon, batch number: 11479403]

First 'The Good': Excellent performance.
I have it running in my home build workstation (Xeon E5-1620, Supermicro X9SRA, Quadro 4000, 32GB RAM, all wrapped up in an Arc Midi Tower. I should point out this is not the quietest setup as I have 3 140mm Fractal Design (FD-FAN-140) Fans in the case, along with a side panel mounted Silverstone 180mm Air Penetrator Fan, in addition to the fans on the H100. It's livable, but certainly not silent, so the HTPC crowd my want to take the following temps with a pinch of salt.

Using Speedfan to monitor temps, the CPU is 33C at idle, and tops out at 57C running Prime95 torture test (set to 'In-place large FFTs' to really roast all the cores).

After 1 solid hour of Prime95 with all 8* cores @ 100%;
CPU**: 57C
Core 0: 54C
Core 1: 53C
Core 2: 51C
Core 3: 52C

* 4 cores, 8 threads (hyper-threading), all 8 100% in Task Manager. The Xeon E5-1620 is similar to the Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (I guess it probably has the same heat characteristics?).
** I think this is the 'package' temp.

When prime was stopped, the temps dropped in seconds (literally 2-3 seconds) to;
CPU: 38C
Core 0: 34C
Core 1: 34C
Core 2: 33C
Core 3: 35C

Then to idle temps within half a minute
CPU: 33C
Core 0: 30C
Core 1: 30C
Core 2: 28C
Core 3: 28C

The Bad: Fitting.
It didn't. The mounting legs on the pump did not line up with the mounting posts around the socket. My motherboard is socket 2011, and to mount the pump Corsair has supplied special LGA2011 posts that screw directly into the socket's front plate. The back plate is *not* used when mounting the pump on a socket 2011 motherboard. This front plate mounting method is derived from the Xeon mounting system, and it seems all socket 2011 have these.

I could only get three of the legs onto their respective posts at one time - the fourth was out by half the width of the threaded part of the post. I researched this problem, and found vids and forum posts about it. It turns out that some twisted theirs into place, others found they were not so lucky. I've included the batch number of my H100 at the top of this review in case others run into a similar problem. If you do have this problem it's not you! I solved this by taking a small round file and removing some material from inside the rectangular holes on the legs. Perfect fit once done, but I realise this is not for everyone (hence -2 stars).

It's also tricky to mount, and you may need a second pair of hands. When I was fitting the pump to the CPU: I had my case on its side, and rested the radiator on the 24 pin, and 8 pin, power cables to the top-right of the motherboard, and the corner of the top most ram slot (on the X9SRA the ram slots run horizontally, above and below the CPU).

When attaching the fans to the radiator; the supplied bolts are a little bit too long, and will crush some of the radiator fins directly behind the screw hole. I got around this by attaching some 120mm Akasa Fan Guards.

The final installation annoyance was the screws supplied to secure the radiator to the case did not play well with my Fractal Design Arc Midi Case. The screws closest to the edge interfered with the top filter - so the filter did not lay flat. I had to replace these screws with ones used to secure 3.5" HDD (button head, and without the washer). This isn't Corsairs fault, but it you have an Arc Midi case it's something to be aware of.

The Ugly: Rattle.
Loads of rattle coming from the pump, it sounded like a hard drive! After some more research this turns out to be down to trapped air in the pump, and it seems to be very common. I thought the whole idea of a sealed unit was to remove all air - but I guess not. The apparent solution is to flick the pipes to let the air rise up into the radiator, but it didn't work for me. I resorted to turning my tower on it's side and leaving it to run overnight. By the morning it seemed to have stopped. The pump is still not as 'whisper quiet' as I expected it to be, about the same as fan, though it sounds different. The pump noise disappears into the sound the air rush from the fans, so when working I don't really notice it.

The fans where a little bit on the noisy side, so I replaced them with a couple of 120mm Silverstone Air Penetrator fans. Much better.

Conclusion
An effective cooler with some rough design edges. I've knocked off 2 stars for the socket 2011 fitting problems - not everyone with a socket 2011 based motherboard is going to be comfortable applying the force needed to twist it into place (assuming it will even go in the first place!), or taking a file to the legs. If you do not have a socket 2011 motherboard you are probably going to have an easier run of it. I didn't take any off for the rattle, as this seems to be par for the course where 'water cooling' is concerned, and apparently it eventually goes (with flicking, and moving the case about).

Now that it's fitted, and I am starting to forget the hassle, I am very pleased with it's performance. I wouldn't recommend it for a novice, but there again most buying an H100 are probably not novices. Modders will have no trouble, but I suspect they are already messing with full water cooling kit!

This is a watercooler that is designed for someone who is more the hardcore gamer and what's too push there system to the limit with serious overclocks and for someone who wants to mess with the voltages, So if you are that kind of person this is perfect for you as it keeps extremely low temps even with heavy overclocking this is due to the two fans as oppose to the other lower level watercoolers which only use a single fan. To summarise must buy for a hardcore gamer wanting to due heavy OC's.