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The Corsair A50 and A70 coolers arrive in two very stylish boxes, an identical design ethic we noted with the AX1200 Power Supply review. While its not often we compliment box art, we feel these are really helping Corsair cement their standing as a company to take seriously.
Both coolers are encased in heavy duty protective foam and the fans and accessories are placed inside a seperate cardboard container.
The A70 is supplied with two 120mm Corsair branded fans, and the less expensive A50 is supplied with a solitary fan.
These fans are high quality models, which are sold as low noise, low vibration models mounted on rubber studs and the speeds are selectable between 1,600 and 2,000 rpm so you can ascertain your own performance to noise ratio, we will analyse noise levels later in the review.
Cleverly these fans are attached to a plastic shroud which makes fitting extremely easy. Corsair don't take any chances either as the two fans supplied with the A70 have the shrouds mounted in a push airflow mode on one fan and a pull airflow mode on the other, meaning you just slide them onto the cooler and you are ready to go.
The A70 is a beefier design (and has a case of acne underneath – see above) and also has four 8mm heatpipes whereas the A50 is a three way design. The engineering quality as we would expect from Corsair branded products is exceptionally high and the heatpipes themselves are as good as anything we have seen from other companies, such as market leaders Noctua.
The A50 is the lower end model and Corsair have stated in their reviewers guide that this cooler is being marketed as a ‘great first stage upgrade' from a stock CPU cooler and that this product will ‘increase cooling performance and overclocking flexibility'. They then go on to say that the Air Series A50 should be compared to ‘stock CPU coolers' and ‘aftermarket CPU coolers that exist in a similar price bracket'.
There is unfortunately one major issue with Corsair's guide and that is the pricing – checking online stores in the UK such as Overclockers.co.uk – this cooler is retailing for around the £43 inc vat price point, which means its actually more expensive than the ThermalTake Frio, which is marketed as a high end overclocking specific unit. This has proven to be one of the best performing coolers in our testing so we remain slightly confused at Corsair's official stance on this.
The A70 is the flagship product in the Air Series range and it includes two fans which are already mounted onto plastic housings, these are effectively rubber mounted. We liked the fact that Corsair had one of the fans flow positions reversed so the end user wouldn't end up with two fans pulling or pushing air.
The Corsair reviewers guide is less restrictive on how we should test this cooler, which is just as well as the price in the UK currently is £55 inc vat which is putting it almost directly against such formidable competition as the Noctua NH D14 Austrian Sandwich which leads the way in KitGuru air cooling performance testing.
Both coolers are beautifully engineered and we particularly like the black and gold top surface design, it looks great if your case has a side window.
As previously stated, both of these coolers fully support all available platforms, including AMD AM2, AM3, Intel 775, 1156 and 1366.
The fan design is brilliant, about time some company sorted that out !, no fiddling about with pissy little clips. Performance is great also, quite impressed with the products. ill wait for the price of the A70 to come down a bit, i was going to buy the frio, but corsair are a better company I think for quality.
Been waiting for a review of the A50 for a while now, no one has them for review by the looks of it. well apart from kitguru ! Im a little disappointed and I agree completely with the conclusion, price needs to drop Corsair.
very attractive designs, the A70 looks very very like the frio doesnt it ? pricing is a little ermm insane!
Both of these are great coolers, no questions about it. only thing is they need to slap whoever priced them. I dont mind paying a bit more for the corsair quality name, but come on chaps. lets be realistic here please.
that fan fitting is very clever. sliding onto the actual unit and the A70 has two mounted different ways.
Unfortunate about the pricing. the Frio at under £40 means you can save some money over the Noctua NH D14 which is still £60 in the UK. you are paying a lot more for A70. and its probably just worth putting another 5-7 quid for the noctua. You even get better fans with the noctua unit, one of which is 140mm.
Corsair dropped the ball here a little, and I think the scoring on this review was generous, id give them both 6/10. They are good performers, but the pricing surely loses them a lot of points.
Its a diificult decision we need to call sometimes, because if we score these low just due to pricing, and the prices drop in a month, then our review needs to be rescored. At KitGuru we tend to score products on their capabilities and performance, then factor in pricing and if its too high we mention it clearly in the text within the reviews. They are hard to recommend at the current prices in the UK, however they are quailty products as would be expected from Corsair and as such they are still recommended. I am actually quite sure the prices will drop in the near future.
The Corsair AX1200 is a stellar unit which is clearly delivering something other power supplies aren’t right now. These coolers make no sense to me, they are charging a premium when really there are comparable solutions already available at a fraction of the cost. the Thermaltake Contac 29 is a case in point here. That is a bargain cooler at just over £20, and its probably just as good as the A50 at twice the price.
Bit lacking. I saw the press release for these last week and got excited. Was hoping they would be as good as the H50 is in its price bracket. Also im interested in the reviewers guides you got sent. They seriously want to compare a £43 cooler against one you get free with a CPU? sureeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee……
A50 with that fan would be a great purchase, if it was reasonably priced. Can’t believe thats more expensive than the Frio high end unit. Clearly Thermaltake and Corsair have very different views on this and im siding with thermaltake. shame, that mounting system and the fan attachment is a brilliant exercise in how to further improve the platform.
Not much I can say that the peops in here have said already. nice job on the products, not so nice on the pricing
I read the whole article, loved the review, great testing as always, then got to the conclusion and still dont understand what corsair are thinking, drop the price of both by £15. sell a ton of them. right now people wont buy these, the box is great, but its not worth £15.
What a well balanced review. and I agree 100%. love the products. A70 in particular and while id pay a premium for corsair badge, and support etc. I wouldnt pay £17 more over a Frio for the A70. thats a ludicrous decision and I dont know what marketing monkey thought that was a great idea. Has actually pissed me off a little as I own a lot of corsair products and feel tainted.
Wow, what a rip off. Nice coolers but the pricing? its so far out its not even funny. Noctua NH D14 you can almost justify as its so much more material in it, its huge. but the A70 is basically a rebadged frio, lets be honest here.
Good review, I shall avoid these and get a Contac 29, seems best all round affordable cooler on the market today.
$$$$$ – overpriced. and while good performers, not worth it. drop the price and I might contemplate
Well this is good to read, was expecting more from the coolers for the money but nothing out of the ordinary, like the design however,t hats worth a few quid.
id like the A70, but im not living on the planet infinite pockets. If I was spending £55 on air cooling I might as well put the rest to it and get the noctua.
I wonder why they are charging so much?
Very solid review all round, and I agree, they need to wack the price with a shovel.
I don’t get it why every manufacturer trying to produce hundreds of products for every market possible. Take Corsair here. Great memory sticks, equally good PSU. So why they moving now toward CPU coolers, PC cases and so on. Just stick with something and improve on that. Who on Earth will pick any of two Corsairs reviewed above when you can still buy good old Thermolab BARAM for half price which can easily outperform both A50&A70 and go toe to toe vs giants like Cogage Arrow, Noctua DH14 and so on. Another proof that old doesn’t mean bad, and BARAM is 2 yo which is close to eternity on PC market… Price for both Corsairs is simply ludicrous when compared to current and older competition.
” Hakuren. You make some GREAT points man. Couldnt agree more. I mean these are good coolers, but they really arent special enough to be justifying the cost. I forgot all about the thermolab BARAM, its right up there with the FRIO. and at even less cost too.
EDIT: 23 July 4.00 PM Corsair have informed us that some UK dealers are selling the products for less already so be sure to Google the coolers for your specific region. Here are some other links in the UK.
A70 – Novatech £45.99
A50 – Overclock.co.uk £35.88
£10 off the A70 already? wow OCUK are really ripping people off with this at £55 !!
Eh? how can novatech be charging a £10 less on a product thats just released?
Found this via google search, what a great site, i will be hanging around.
These now look good value at the updated prices. And as for whoever said they were a rebadged frio, have you actually looked at them? The a70 and a50 have direct contact heatpipes, frio does not….
I have been using the A70 for a couple weeks now. It seems to work well, but it sure makes things pretty tight in a mid-tower case. With a MSI P55-GD65 mobo, it covered up one RAM slot. I had to remove the fins from the Dominator RAM to get it to fit, but the RAM cooler really took some work to get it to fit. Definitely look at low profile RAM if you use one of these. Again, I like the cooler, but I may look at the H50 liquid cooler next time, just so there is more room around the CPU.
Ehh, what fan did you use on the Megahalems since it doesn’t come with one?