CORSAIR Hydro H70 CWCH70 120mm High Performance CPU Cooler

I got this cooler from a guy at a LAN event I went to. He had been trying to get rid of it for a while now and it had just been sitting around in a box not doing anything but collecting dust. After chatting with him for a while and explaining my interest in water cooling but lacking any real funds to do so, he gave it to me since he would rather it have some use instead of doing nothing. And so it came to be that I had ventured into liquid cooling but not without some hiccups along the way.

While the H70 was, at it's time, the top-of-the-line AIO cooling solution, it was far from being the best cooling solution, period. At high clocks and full load it kept temps down much better than my Hyper 212+ on my i7-920 but when it came to idle temps it didn't really do much better and seemed to actually increase my temps by about 5 degrees. It did perform quieter than the air setup simply because I could have the fans blowing at slower RPMs and get better temps when dealing with high load situations but the higher idle temps left my fans running fast at idle than when the 212+ was cooling.

The Corsair H70 is a great pick for people that can get it cheaply but I wouldn't buy it if you need something that is going to be cooling more powerful chips or if you need better idle temps with lower RPMs.

Hey OCN, welcome to my third review! This will be a review on the Corsair H70 cooler. I've had this cooler for quite some time now, and it's been through a few overclocks, so I figured I'd write a review.

Onto the pros & cons!

Pros:

• Self contained. No maintenance whatsoever, aside from getting the dust out of the radiator and fans every few months, that's as hard as it gets as far as maintenance and upkeep goes.
  
• It's very unobtrusive. Even with my current mid tower, I still have a little bit of room for things. With a full tower, there should really be no issue for space at all.
  
• Aesthetically pleasing, it looks really cool. Doesn't clash really, and it'll look good in any color scheme rig.
  
• It's built very well, and you really don't even have to worry about leaks whatsoever. The tubes can be bent into various ways, etc.. it's just a solid product as far as craftsmanship goes.
  
• Relatively cheap, even when ordering the version that comes with the two fans.
  
• Corsair support is great, it really is. Thankfully I've only had to deal with a few manufacturers as far as support goes, and Corsair was one of them.

Cons:

• For the price you pay, the performance it gives cooling wise is negotiable. It isn't anything spectacular for the price you pay, and some people even consider going very low-end custom loops over the H70 for this reason specifically. At a 4.5GHz overclock with 1.29v, I would get around 40c idle, and mid 70s load. In the brutal summer, because my room has very poor ambient temperatures, I would get as high as 80s load. So if you have rather poor ambient temperatures, this cooler will under perform more than it already does.
  
• Instructions are poorly written and worded. I'm not stupid, but I'm also not a genius, and I have my fair share of mistakes. However, the instructions for the H70 cooler could definitely be written better, especially for 1155 socket owners.
  
• Unlike the H100, the H70 does not have a pump controller built into it.

Overall:

The Corsair H70 is a great cooler, however, I definitely wish the cooling performance was slightly better for the price you pay. However, aside from its performance, its aesthetics and build quality make up for it, and make it a great entry cooler for enthusiasts and overclockers in mind