Alright here goes, last night I installed the H80i on my stock i7 2600K to check the noiselevels (The cooling wasnt really a major concern, I knew that would be exeptional).
At first I was horrified, as the noise was just unbearable, the pump sounded like a carengine and the fans were trying to commit suicide.
No panic though, I figured the best course of action was to play around with Corsair Link and see if I could manually set the damn thing straight.
Fans were no problem, setting them to a fixed RPM of 700 turned down the noise alot (They are virtually inaudible at those RPM), but the pump remained the same no matter how I set it. Finally I managed to get it to a level that seemed acceptable but still not great. I was strongly considering going back to my aircooler and RMAing the damn thing.
But today I installed the new Corsair Link Dashboard and then updated the firmware of the H80i.... and I must say I am impressed. Now my case (NZXT Phantom) does bring noise down a fair bit from inside the case but still, now the H80i makes about as much noise as a good aircooler, meaning almost nothing.
Cooling is also great, I clocked the CPU to 4.6Ghz (Nothing amazing, I know, but it was just to see how the cooler would perform). So far I havent gone above 55C during SuperPi, Heaven Benchmark or 3Dmark11 wich to me seems like a pretty good number.
My idle temps are around 35C, and loadtemps varies depending on if I am playing games or running benchmarks but 55C seems to be the most it will ever reach. Another thing is how fast the temps drop to idle after finishing a benchmark, it takes a few seconds for the cooler to drop the CPU from 55C to about 40C, if you are shutting down a game it takes roughly the seconds the game takes to close, and after that another 20 seconds maybe down to low idle.
So final verdict? If properly updated the H80i has amazing performance, both in cooling and noise and is well worth the price if you want watercooling but dont feel like building your own loop.
I hope atleast someone might find this thead informative, and if anyone has questions il answer them as best I can.
At first I was horrified, as the noise was just unbearable, the pump sounded like a carengine and the fans were trying to commit suicide.
No panic though, I figured the best course of action was to play around with Corsair Link and see if I could manually set the damn thing straight.
Fans were no problem, setting them to a fixed RPM of 700 turned down the noise alot (They are virtually inaudible at those RPM), but the pump remained the same no matter how I set it. Finally I managed to get it to a level that seemed acceptable but still not great. I was strongly considering going back to my aircooler and RMAing the damn thing.
But today I installed the new Corsair Link Dashboard and then updated the firmware of the H80i.... and I must say I am impressed. Now my case (NZXT Phantom) does bring noise down a fair bit from inside the case but still, now the H80i makes about as much noise as a good aircooler, meaning almost nothing.
Cooling is also great, I clocked the CPU to 4.6Ghz (Nothing amazing, I know, but it was just to see how the cooler would perform). So far I havent gone above 55C during SuperPi, Heaven Benchmark or 3Dmark11 wich to me seems like a pretty good number.
My idle temps are around 35C, and loadtemps varies depending on if I am playing games or running benchmarks but 55C seems to be the most it will ever reach. Another thing is how fast the temps drop to idle after finishing a benchmark, it takes a few seconds for the cooler to drop the CPU from 55C to about 40C, if you are shutting down a game it takes roughly the seconds the game takes to close, and after that another 20 seconds maybe down to low idle.
So final verdict? If properly updated the H80i has amazing performance, both in cooling and noise and is well worth the price if you want watercooling but dont feel like building your own loop.
I hope atleast someone might find this thead informative, and if anyone has questions il answer them as best I can.
