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The Corsair H70 is an evolutionary step taken with the liquid cooled H50 design. It is bigger, heftier, more capable and still as easy to fit. The legendary Corsair build quailty is still a primary selling point and the company are flying high in 2010 with a consistently high quality range of products.
The H70 has many improvements when compared to the H50 – we like the new tubing for one because it is slightly more flexible, which makes fitting easier. The addition of flexible mounts on the block itself helps with installation and axis movement to suit specific builds. This is the cooler you can move easily from system to system without any hassles. While it seems like such a small point Corsair do deserve a lot of credit for this as many manufacturers still get it wrong.
The H70 can easily handle the biggest, fattest overclocks as our testing proved today. With a high end 6 core Intel Core i7 at 4.53ghz the Corsair H70 hovered around 80c under load. Bear in mind we set a significant core voltage increase which can cause issues for all but a handful of coolers we have tested to date.
We have tested with the hottest running processor on the market today, so if you are using a Core i5 or AMD processor and want to overclock, rest assured your temperatures will be much lower. We always try and present a worst case scenario when testing high end coolers.
As with the Coolit Vantage, the Corsair H70 is not capable of beating the Noctua NH D14. This doesn't mean you should disregard it however. Firstly, the Noctua NH D14 consumes a vast amount of physical space and will block many motherboards from using high profile ram heatspreaders. It hogs all the area around the heatsink and can prove a little difficult for some people to fit – it is the monster Zeppelin of coolers. The Corsair H70 is much smaller and will free up the area around the CPU for oversized memory and whatever else you need … just bear in mind with two 120mm fans now sandwiching the radiator it does take up more space than the H50.
The Corsair H70 is a superior cooler to the Coolit Vantage and is £20 less in the UK at time of press. Our friends at Yoyotech are supplying it right now for £86 inc vat and it makes a great foundation for an overclocked system build.
fuck, what a review Zardon. great testing. and very good performance from all three coolers ! I will never be able to afford a CPU like that.
Awesome ! Still not able to knock the NH D14 off the top spot I see !
Very very good test idea, I love how you throw things on their head Zardon – what performance out of the noctua ! H70 did better than I thought
Christ, the test to end all tests. liked the section on air flow, that was very informative and I never thought about it like that either.
YEAH !!!! I have been waiting for this one, and I have to say, hand on heart, the results played out EXACTLY as I imagined they would. Great cooler from corsair and the price is a little steep, but still quite good.
Yeah baby. I need to get this cooler. the noctua NH D14 is still awesome, but its far too big for my case. I cant deal with that, especially the strain on the mobo long term, bound to cause damage and strained parts.
Absoultely brilliant review Kitguru, this is just what I wanted to see. not a clear win really for noctua, due to size.
Well its a clear win if you are only looking at performance figures !
Noctua NH D14 is incredible, but I agree, its ridiculously sized for most people.
Really thought this review was one of de best I have seen in a longe time. thanks you.
Incredible results for the Noctua NH D14 – had to laugh at the picture of it with 3 fans, its basically a chassis, inside a chassis!
Very good product from corsair again – this is a much better deal IMO than NH D14, its far too big to be sensible for most people. You get limited with memory selection too.
So – Noctua is £60, Corsair is £85 and Coolit is £105.
The cheapest performs the best, the middle performs middle best and the most expensive is the worst.
Its not quite as black n white as that, but its interesting.
I love the look of this corsair unit, the coolit one didnt appeal to me, you are paying 30 quid for the screen. I dont need a screen, I also dont need a heatsink the size of a small county in england.
Great review, was contemplating which one to get, now I know. but its a secret :p
Noctua have made such a damn good cooler, every site loves it. some sites dont test it against H70 so its good to see this. Very impressed with corsair unit however, the head is so small.
I might be alone in my thinking, but the noctua cooler scares me to look at. fitting it and putting such a strain on my 200 quid motherboard? the corsair seems best to me, but I like the noctua options and screen quality.
Very good testing, it puts things into a ‘im a rich bastard and have loads of money to spend, and I will also overclock the balls of my processor’ category. most of us will have a core i5 or AMD cpu and these will ALL run much cooler.
great review.
All of these are very expensive. even the noctua, although you are paying for the metal ! coolit is my favourite, Im probably in the minority. I dont need these insane overclocks, so I would say with a reasonable OC and a mid range cpu it would be awesome.
Noctua is just impossible to beat, but it seems such a brute force solution to me, make the biggest heatsink you can build and slap multiple fans on it.
Guess it works though !
Great review, found it on google, very helpful for my purchase. Corsair here I come !
This is a fantastic review Kitguru, bookmarked for another read tomorrow after work.
Nice review!! thumbs up – all 4 of them 😀
great idea for the review – all of the coolers seem really capable !
Amazed how good the corsair and noctua really are 🙂
Would there by any way to test this vs the Coolit Eco 240. This is a great review and I have been reading alot of them for the H70, Coolit Vantage, and the Eco 240 but have not seen this against the Eco 240 yet. I also have been in talks with Coolit about getting a custom Vantage 240 but don’t know if the price is worth the performance. Any Help or Guidance will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Another great review mate, I might consider the H70 when i decide to upgrade my system… 🙂
Now that’s what I’m talking about! So sick of these sites using the True120 for all their top air tests when the D14 is the ultimate air cooling…I didn’t even know 3 fans was possible I’ll have to give it a shot.
Hello just wondering how the hell you mount a H70 in a Antec p 193 case, I can hardly fit the H50 in it due to the big boy 200 mm side panal fan.
I moved the fan and radiator to the front of the case intake threw the front, Though I do not think I could fit a huge h70 that way either.
Yeah I have a P193 and I fitted one in mine, but I ditched the standard massive fan side door and ordered one without it.
I think comparing the H70 vs the Coolit Vantage could be reconsidered. The H70 comes with two 120mm fans (push-pull setup) while the Coolit Vantage comes with only one 120mm fan. The thing is the Coolit Vantage also has the capability of adding an additional 120mm fan for a similar push-pull setup. I’ve personally used the H70 and then converted to the Coolit Vanatge (with the extra fan added). Happy to say I achieved a decrease in temps by 3 degrees on an overclocked 965BE at 4.22ghz.
IMO get the Coolit, buy the additional fan and have the bonus of the digital display.
How much better is this cooler versus the H50?? Is it really much more powerful or is it comparable to the H50 plus another fan…? I am asking because a vendor I am thinking of buying from only carries either the H50 or the VANTAGE! I am wondering if it worth the trouble for me to buy after market and install it or just screw it and go with the H50 or Vantage.. 😀 What do you say guys…? Or just go with the Noctua — right? …jeje