Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU Cooler Cases and Cooling   Page 1

Reviewer: Nik Kastrantas Article Publish Date: 11/14/2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Roughly 5 years ago several companies like Zalman, CoolerMaster, Thermaltake and Corsair launched liquid cooling kits aimed at enthusiasts, without large success i may add since their performance was nowhere near to what the price tags suggested and for that reason their existence was soon forgotten. Lately a second wave of liquid cooling kits have entered the market promising great cooling performance with an affordable price. The first of these companies was CoolIT with the Domino ALC which we had the chance to test a while back. The Domino ALC performed quite well and its price tag was even lower than some would believe possible for a liquid cooling solution. The second company to launch such a product is Corsair, a company that also participated in the first wave back in 2006 with the very good Nautilus 500 and which today has send us their latest cost effective liquid cooling kit the Hydro Series H50.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Corsair has been a leader in the design and manufacture of high-speed modules since 1994. Our focus has always been on supporting the special demands of mission-critical servers and high-end workstations, as well as the performance demands of extreme gamers. While maintaining this core focus, in recent years, we've also brought our expertise, technology leadership and legendary quality and reliability to memory and other technology products for the more mainstream consumer. As a pioneer in high-speed module design, Corsair is a trusted supplier to many computer manufacturers. In high-density memory solutions, Corsair has always been one of the first suppliers to achieve advanced qualifications on Intel, Tyan and SuperMicro server platforms. We also work closely with other major server platform manufacturers to release product that is 100% compatible with their latest server products. With more high-speed experience than anyone in the industry, we know the importance of design features like tightly-controlled trace lengths, controlled impedances, clock trace design, unbroken power and ground planes, and selectively plated gold. Corsair Memory has developed an industry-wide reputation for quality, compatibility and performance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

      It is quite obvious that Corsair released the Hydro Series to compete with the Domino ALC by CoolIT since it is the only kit in the market as aggressively priced. For that reason mostly Corsair decided to team up with a well known company in the watercooling field, Asetek. Asetek has been manufacturing extreme cooling solutions such as the VapoChill unit and that can only be considered as very positive. However make no mistake, the Hydro Series are not real watercooling kits since they are hardly customizable and they don't perform as good as complete water cooling solutions, still with their current price tag no one can really complain about that.