CES 2020: Hands-on with Corsair’s new air and AIO coolers

Our CES team are back again today, and Luke is at the Corsair booth taking a look at what new cooling products the company is launching at the beginning of 2020. There’s a new CPU tower cooler coming from Corsair along with a PRO series of closed-loop all-in-one coolers too.

Corsair has been out of the CPU air cooling market for a long time but is making a return this year with the new premium high-end A500 CPU tower cooler. Corsair has implemented an innovative fan mounting design in the A500 that allows adjustment for RAM clearance. The A500 fans are mounted in ratchet sliding frames to provide almost unlimited RAM clearance and eliminate the fiddly spring clip fan retention system other vendors use.

The A500 features a brushed finish top cover which is designed simply for aesthetic reasons, the top cover is easily removable to aid the installation process. Corsair has omitted RGB lighting from its A500 tower cooler as it believes that is what the customer would prefer. The A500 is technically a dual tower design, however, both tower’s heatsink fins are connected, but with a large central cutout for installation purposes.

Corsair has equipped the A500 with four copper direct contact heatpipes, the two central heatpipes are 8mm diameter with the two outer heatpipes slightly smaller at 6mm diameter. The base plate of the A500 is constructed from aluminium and the cooler supports all current mainstream desktop platforms such as Intel 115x, AMD AM3+, AM4 and FM1 as well as Intel HEDT LGA 2066 and 2011.

In addition to the return to air cooling with the A500, Corsair is launching a new range of closed-loop AIO coolers too. The iCUE RGB PRO XT series adopts the CoolIT design from the company’s Platinum range which is set to bring a higher level of cooling performance to Corsair’s PRO AIO series. As the title suggest the iCUE RGB PRO XT range will feature RGB lighting to the pump body only, the ML fans included are the standard non-RGB versions.

Corsair claims the CoolIT design is an improvement over the Asetek Gen 6 pump, so the iCUE RGB PRO XT series should offer a thermal performance improvement over the previous PRO models. The new PRO XT series will be available in 240mm (H100i), 280mm (H115i) and 360mm (H150i) versions. In terms of socket compatibility, the Corsair iCUE RGB PRO XT series supports all major desktop processors including Intel socket LGA 115x, 2066, 2011-3,2011, AMD AM4, sTR4, AM3+, FM1 and FM2.

Both the Corsair A500 tower cooler and the new iCUE RGB PRO XT AIO series will be available to purchase in Q1 2020, the A500 will be priced at £89.99 and the iCUE RGB PRO XT starts from £119.99 for the 240mm H100i.

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KitGuru says: Corsair has entered the CPU air cooling market once again and has targeted the big boys straight away, the new A500 tower cooler is set to rival the likes of the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 and Noctua’s NH-D15. What do you guys think to these new coolers from Corsair?

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