Corsair A50 and A70 Coolers Review

1. Introduction2. Corsair A50 and A70 Coolers3. Installation4. Testing Methodology and Performance5. Acoustic Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

As we mentioned earlier in the review Corsair have targeted both coolers at two very different markets and with the A50 they are recommending we compare against a stock/reference cooler. KitGuru is going to ignore this recommendation because the A50 is retailing at over £40 in the UK and as such is facing stiff competition from such high end models as the Thermaltake Frio (£37).

What we are going to do is test both coolers against several other products available today at various price points and let the results speak for themselves. This means while KitGuru will come to our own conclusions you are also able to make up your own mind.

We will use a high end Intel 980X as the basis for our testing today, because while we can test both coolers with the CPU in a default state, we can also see how they can deal with voltage increases and overclocking. There is no point testing expensive performance coolers with low end processors.

We use the following for measurements as many onboard software based results are not accurate.

MultiMeter Thermal Probe
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp

Main products:
Corsair A50 and A70

Comparison Coolers:
Thermaltake Frio
Noctua NH D14
Thermaltake Contac 29
Prolimatech Megahalems
Xigmatek HDT-S1283
Coolit Domino ALC

Test System
CPU: Intel Core i7 980x
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Motherboard: Intel DX58SO
Power Supply: Antec 750w Truepower
Graphics Card: ATI 5870
Memory: Corsair XMS3 DDR31600
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 02
Hard Drive: Crucial RealSSD 256GB

With air conditioning, room ambient temperatures were kept at a steady 25c, comfortable conditions for most people. Load temperatures were recorded by looping Cinebench R11.5 for a 30 minute period under 100% load and recording the maximum results. These are real world conditions … the application uses the Cinema 4D rendering engine.

The fans on the Corsair coolers were left on the higher setting and the Thermaltake Frio fans were set to both maximum and a mid way point, showing how the cooler will perform under maximum noise conditions and then ‘usable real world situation'. The Noctua NH D14 fans were left on default high settings as they don't make much noise and this is how we use them all the time anyway. All other coolers were left on high/default settings.

It is great to see coolers at £20 able to handle a £800 Intel Core i7 980X at reference clock speeds and voltages. The Corsair A70 falls in around the same performance levels as the Thermaltake Frio only losing out by 0.5C under load.

This kind of testing however only paints half the picture, to ascertain differences in cooler design we need to crank the overclock and the voltage so we can better judge how the coolers perform when whipped to within an inch of their life.

We crank the 980X to 4.3ghz and raise voltage to 1.425.

The Noctua NH D14 is still in a class of its own at the top of the chart but the Frio manages to outperform the more expensive A70 cooler even on medium fan settings. The Corsair A50 manages to slightly outperform the Contac 29 although it is so minor a difference only our specialist diodes were able to record the differences.

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