Corsair H100 CPU Water Cooler Review

Final Thoughts

Pros:

Great performance
Virtually silent at idle
Pump/block mounts easily
Room to expand to push/pull later on

Cons:

Radiator is large and can be tricky to mount
Fairly loud at full load
Hoses are very stiff

Overall the H100 is a very nice cooler. It delivers some of the best performance available right now outside of a custom water cooling loop, and costs a whole lot less too. It is very quiet, the pump mounting was simple, and you have room to expand to a push/pull should you want even more cooling power. The issue with these top-of-the-line setups though is always practicality. Many people do not have the side-by-side 120mm fan mounts needed to install this cooler. And even if they do, they may still run in to issues with motherboard clearances due to the size. Add to that the stiffness of the hoses which further increase the radiator mounting problems and the noise it makes at full tilt, and you can see that this cooler is intended for the user who cares about one thing only, performance.

With the H100 you make a trade-off, practicality for pure performance. At it’s current $110 selling price, you will also pay for this performance, especially since something like the Water 2.0 Pro is $10-20 cheaper. But if you are willing and able to mount this cooler in your rig, you will benefit from some of the lowest temperatures possible from a plug-and-play system.
The H100 does it’s job of cooling a CPU very, very well. You just sacrifice in a few other areas to achieve that.