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Today we are going to take another look at the Corsair H100i liquid CPU that we reviewed a few weeks ago. We were very impressed with the cooler and it deservedly won our most prestigious ‘Must Have' award. This time, we are going to see how the cooler performs when paired with some of Corsair's latest aftermarket fans.
The Corsair Air Series SP120 fans are available in two editions – quiet and high performance. These are essentially the same fans but they spin at different speeds, offering different compromises between noise and airflow.
These fans are specially designed to be used with water cooling radiators as they generate high static pressure. Corsair has other fans available in the same series which are designed to be used as case fans, called the Air Flow series.
In this article will see how these new fans compare to the standard fans that are supplied with the H100i, as well as seeing how the cooler performs with them running in push and push-pull configurations. We will also be testing the legacy H100 with the same fans, to see how the two differ in terms of performance.
Specifications
That is quite a lot of testing Henry, much appreciated. Very useful too. I might get 4 of the quiet fans after christmas. Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to you too!!
Excelent review! I was wondering the difference in performing between these two Corsair. This is much more that I was looking for. Thanks! Now I know which one to buy and what coolers have to go with it.
Great review Henry!:)
Question though, when you say “Performance” regarding the stock H100i fans, does that mean you have it set to “performance” mode in the Corsair Link software? If so, those RPMs on that mode are only around 16xx, if you put them on ‘maximum’ they are around 2600 RPMs. I usually have mine on “maximum” because I want the best cooling I can get, but after reading this, should I just keep them on “Performance”?
I just replaced the stock fans on my H100i with SP120 Quiet Editions, and now my cpu pump led is constantly changing colour – even though I have it set to change on colour temperature. It seems to have thrown out the H100i’s ability to monitor the cpu temp accurately. Is this a known issue? As I’m tempted to go back to the stock fans. It might be because the SP120 has a 3 pin tail, rather than a 4 pin one?
Air Series SP120 High Performance Edition will only spin at very high speed on the h100i at 1600rpm lowest so they are hard to control and keep quite. I had to connect them to mobo headers.