Corsair H75 Review

Corsair H75 Review

Conclusion

With the H75 Corsair aim to make a Cooler for the masses.  We’re not too sure exactly who the masses are to be honest, but we’re going to hazard a guess that they’re the sort who aren’t necessarily looking for the very best with money no object, neither are they looking for the very cheapest, instead they’re looking for a well-balanced product, something that will give them reasonable performance, in a compact form to increase compatibility and at a price that won’t give them a nose bleed.  So have Corsair managed this?

The H75 is certainly a compact unit.  The radiator is just 25mm thick, a full 13mm thinner than the more performance centric H80i.  This means Corsair have been able to bundle the cooler with a pair of 120mm fans and still keep the overall thickness of the assembly at 75mm.  Keeping the thickness of the assembly down of course means you can squeeze it into tighter spaces and smaller cases, and with SFF and compact cube cases increasing in popularity as a result of better performing and spec’d mini-ITX and M-ATX motherboards it’s no small wonder that Corsair have chosen to release a product that will cater for these as well as bigger and more traditional Mid towers.  The fans supplied with the H75 aren’t your standard black OEM jobs either, Corsair have opted to use a pair of SP120L, which at 2000RPM produce a quite reasonable 2.8mm H20 of static pressure and produce 54 CFM of airflow.  The fans are wired via 4 pin PWM connections and can be controlled as a pair by using the supplied Y splitter.

The quality of the H75 is as we have come to expect from Corsair.  The paint job is decent and evenly applied and there were no bent fins or scratches.  The contact plate, which looks to be an Asetek/Corsair unit has a chunky Iron man chest plate look about it.  Underneath sits a large circular copper contact plate with copper microfin structure internals to improve efficiency.

Fitting the H75 is a dream, with Corsair seeming to improve on what was already a pretty simple process.  In doing away with a notched back plate and replacing it with a slotted raised pin plate and retention bolts that are tapered and so self-seat, Corsair have made it even easier to locate the mounting hardware.  This coupled with excellent instructions and a separate and equally attractive mounting plate for AMD users means whatever flavour of chip you’re using, you won’t have to get irritable over the installation.

Despite generating a rated 34dB(A) at the full 12v we test at, in use the H75 was quieter than a good many of the AIOs we’ve seen which always seem to have noisy fans, especially when compared to the single fan set up of the H60.  The performance of the H75 was also impressive when you consider the thin radiator profile.  The unit held its own all the way up to 4.4GHz, seeing off all air coolers apart from the mighty NH-D14.  It also managed to get the better of quite a few other AIOs including not just the 120L Eisberg, but the 240mm rad based Eisberg 240L.  The H75 didn’t make it into the hallowed 4.6GHz club, but then neither did we expect it to.

Looking at the competition in a little more detail let’s start with Corsairs own H60 and H80i.  The H75 comes in about £5 more than the H60 and as you would expect outperforms it by 2.5 degrees in the 4.4GHz test, mainly on account of the twin fan set up on the H75.   Being £10 cheaper and 13mm thinner than the H80i you’d expect the H75 to not perform as well, and you’d be right as it’s a good 7 degrees off the pace.  Interestingly the relationship between the prices almost mirrors the price differential between the 3 coolers.  If we look at the other coolers in our graphs we can see that the more expensive 240mm rad based systems provide better performance with many of them making it into the 4.6GHz club.  Only the NZXT KrakenX40 falls south of the H75 and although this is a slim rad design like the H60, it is based on a 140mm fan so is unlikely to offer the same level of case compatibility as the 140mm fan based H75.

We asked if the H75 was the AIO for the masses that Corsair claim it to be.  We guess only time will tell.  In the meantime however we suspect that they may be onto something as in the H75, Corsair have indeed produced a cooler that offers good performance enabling a decent overclock.  The compact form will enable it to be fitted into many of the SFF and mini cube cases on the market as well as more standard Mid Towers, and the price, well we think for what you’re getting for your £68 your nose should remain epistaxis free.

     

Thanks to Corsair for sending in the H75, you can discuss your thoughts in the OC3D Forums.Â