Corsair Cooling Hydro-Series All-in-One High-Performance Liquid CPU Cooler CWCH60

The Corsair H60 was a tough decision for me, I knew I wanted a closed-loop liquid CPU cooler, massive air coolers are ridiculously big and can cause airflow problems inside your case. I chose this over the Corsair H80/H100 because it was smaller, and in tests (Google search Corsair H60 vs H80) the H80 was only marginally better at cooling than the H60, especially at idle (with about 3 degrees difference at load). Admittedly, if you intend on overclocking like crazy, buy the H80 or H100, but if you were a serious overclocker you would probably buy a custom liquid cooler anyway, so for that matter, the H100 almost seems redundant. If you don't intend on overclocking to any serious levels, the H60 will be fine for you. I run an Intel Ivy Bridge i7 (currently at its factory settings) and it idles at 34 Degrees Centigrade, load peaked at 60, averaged 57 at load. Which is still way below Tj Max (which is 105). And the cool down time after you go from load to idle is impressive, almost immediate.

Now for the bad part: The noise, its loud, very loud. The cooler comes with one one 120mm fan from Corsair, which runs between 1700-1900rpm at maximum, but can be controlled with software. At 1900rpm, its louder than all the other case fans (6 other fans) put together. Turning the fan down to about 1500rpm does make it significantly quieter (but its still loud) with about 1 degree temperature difference at idle. The pump makes a very quiet ticking, but that cannot be heard over the fan. I can only imagine how loud the H80 is with two of these fans.

Fitting was a ok, but one bolt needed filing down in order to fit and the backplate was a tad fiddly to attach to the motherboard. The radiator and fan are a bit of pain to attach as they need to be attached together, and if one bolt doesn't want to go (like with mine) it can be very frustrating.

Conclusively, you can't go far wrong with this cooler, the build quality is superb. Great if you don't intend to overclock an insane amount, not too expensive, low-profile compared to an air-cooler with similar if not better results. Looks cool (no pun intended) and its nice to say you have a liquid cooled CPU. Corsair's 5-year warranty covers the product itself, but I have heard of them replacing other PC parts should your unit leak (of which there are less than a handful of cases, it won't happen to you).