Kicking off with performance, it’s difficult to see what CORSAIR were thinking when they decided this would be a good launch. Sure, it performs reasonably well and would keep things cool and quiet, but it doesn’t offer anything over the CORSAIR H100i RGB Platinum, other than faster fans which don’t really improve the performance by a noticeable margin.
Aesthetically, the black pump housing looks lovely and we’re scratching our heads wondering why it took CORSAIR so long to do this, it looks a hundred times better than the silver they’ve been using for the past few years. It’s the same pump housing as the Platinum, only in black, but it makes so much sense. Having said that, it makes less impact than two RGB ML120 fans do, which can push a perfectly adequate amount of air through the radiator despite it’s lower top speed, but they add tonnes of lighting to the case, far more than the 16 RGB LEDs in the pump can.
The installation method has been played around with as well, but the reasoning isn’t clear. The review guide we were provided doesn’t make any mention of this, but it impacted the ease of install quite significantly, at least in our opinion. The screws were just too damn tight, they required an unreasonable amount of force to turn in the first time; if you’ve just spent £120 on a new cooling loop, the last thing you want to do is force screws into the radiator, which is exactly what you need to do: force them in.
Pricing, at £120, puts it about where it should be, but for the extra £5, we’d recommend the RGB Platinum instead, unless you really fancy the new blacked on black theme.
Don’t get us wrong, it’s a good cooler, but we’re struggling to see what it does over the Platinum, other than drop the RGB fans and gain an all new black colour scheme.
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Aesthetically, the black pump housing looks lovely and we’re scratching our heads wondering why it took CORSAIR so long to do this, it looks a hundred times better than the silver they’ve been using for the past few years. It’s the same pump housing as the Platinum, only in black, but it makes so much sense. Having said that, it makes less impact than two RGB ML120 fans do, which can push a perfectly adequate amount of air through the radiator despite it’s lower top speed, but they add tonnes of lighting to the case, far more than the 16 RGB LEDs in the pump can.
The installation method has been played around with as well, but the reasoning isn’t clear. The review guide we were provided doesn’t make any mention of this, but it impacted the ease of install quite significantly, at least in our opinion. The screws were just too damn tight, they required an unreasonable amount of force to turn in the first time; if you’ve just spent £120 on a new cooling loop, the last thing you want to do is force screws into the radiator, which is exactly what you need to do: force them in.
Pricing, at £120, puts it about where it should be, but for the extra £5, we’d recommend the RGB Platinum instead, unless you really fancy the new blacked on black theme.
Don’t get us wrong, it’s a good cooler, but we’re struggling to see what it does over the Platinum, other than drop the RGB fans and gain an all new black colour scheme.
Pros
+ Good performance
+ Black pump housing looks excellent
+ Solid iCUE software, as usual
+ TR4 socket support
Neutral
+- Price
Cons
- More difficult to install than previous iterations
- No RGB fans
- Difficult to recommend
+ Good performance
+ Black pump housing looks excellent
+ Solid iCUE software, as usual
+ TR4 socket support
Neutral
+- Price
Cons
- More difficult to install than previous iterations
- No RGB fans
- Difficult to recommend
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
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