Corsair Hydro H5 SF review
Click here to post a comment for Corsair Hydro H5 SF review on our message forum
WaroDaBeast
Nice review, Hilbert!
Looks like a nice option indeed for those of us building SFF rigs. Congrats to Corsair for giving us that option. Cools very well, yet remains quiet (enough). 🙂
AzzKickr
I'm still a bit worried though, regarding general fitment on mini-ITX boards. We see many manufacturers jumping on the mini-ITX platform with increasingly clever designs. Take Asus for example with their "vertical mounted" cpu phases on the Maximus VII impact ...
Koniakki
We have been waiting for this review since early December last year.
And this little thingy delivered and then some! Well done Corsair. :thumbup:
P.S: That CPU cooling block/pump looks the same as the H100i block/pump.
And on a closing note, I would love to build a new "Mini-me" Skylake rig! 😀
wantobe
I love this cooler and it is priced more or less reasonably, I was expecting 100+ euro price tag. Most of all I appreciate that Corsair pioneers a lot of stuff for a good price.
From certain ROG products you can make quickly make a conclusion that functionality is not the primary goal of the product line :banana:
kinggavin
It looks a bit silly , air coolers are fine for mini itx i dont see the need for overclocking a cpu for playing games anymore or gpu for that matter geforce aftermarket cards are overclocked out of the box and non -k intel i7 cpu like 4790 turbo up to 4ghz which is plenty for games , i know overclocking and benchmarking are hobbies but would an overclocker really be interested use an mini itx board
Dazz
Looks good to me less surface area and a tad bit quieter than the H80iGT and tad bit better performance when overclocked and the H80i GT has two fans could be good in SFF's where if you have a watercooled Fury could potentially allow you to fit both in the case with careful planning.
Lolcibolci
Nice cooler. Is there a reason you test on an MSI board, and show a ASUS TUF UEFI bios on page 9?
DLD
Nice job from Corsair, but...
...at the end of the day, you wonder why did you buy yourself a "small factor" mobo? It's like buying a small size revolver to a secret agent, to maintain his "low profile", and then you put the helmet with the inscription "police force" on the guy's head...
schmidtbag
I normally don't care about reviews like this, but this product definitely stood out to me. I'm probably going to do a mini ITX build for my next gaming rig and this seems like a very good cooling option.
@kinggavin
Depends on what you need it for. I regularly use 4 computers at home, each with a different hardware and software configuration (AMD:AMD:Windows+Linux, Intel:Nvidia:Mac, Intel:Intel:Linux, ARM:Mali:Linux) and because of that, none of these systems are fancy, nor do they need to be. If you use a system strictly for gaming and nothing else, you can easily get by with just a quad core, a mini ITX board, 8GB of RAM, a hefty GPU, and at least 4x USB ports. I'm not implying a mind-blowing gaming PC, just a "pretty good" one. Remember - when you remove all the cruft that has nothing to do with gaming, you can get by with a pretty minimal system.
My current gaming PC may very well be the last full-size ATX PC I'll ever have.
Darksword
Since it's drawing in air from all around, won't it also be drawing in a lot of dust too? How do you clean it out?
schmidtbag
I guess it would be in your interest to get filters.
blahsaysblah
Doesnt make sense
That cooler practically requires one of the full ATX versions of mini-itx cases.
If you are required to use the larger ITX cases, than a standard 120mm or 240mm cooler is viable.
Just still have not seen anything that beats the original Sugo 05 case, an ITX sized mini-ITX case.
A little old:
SG05 Small Form Factor High-End Build
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPfV_bOrOhk
waltc3
Know what you mean...;) But there are actually some people who crave tiny sized boxes. Hence the Fury Nano, etc. I like big cases with plenty of elbow room for swapping moboards & other components. But, to each his own...!
blahsaysblah
good ITX has unique pluses
As I've looked for my next build, good ITX actually has unique positives over ATX:
The focused tiny ITX board/case allows one fan to actively cool everything on motherboard. Double up with AIO CPU water cooler for total of one fan making noise... Can even splurge on that super 120mm fan...
The good cases have the graphics card basically separated and right up against an outside air vent, not cycling inside air.
What compromises do you see?
2015 bonuses:
- 2x16GB RAM to run several VMs
- super fast PCIe x4 M.2 NVMe SSD
- good AIO CPU cooler and fan are not super expensive
- graphics card w/idle at low heat and good noise profile at full speed not rare
Extra bonus. It's pretty easy to re-purpose a nice mini-ITX build for many purposes.
FatBoyNL
Another great review!
Didn't feel the urge before, but now I'm even considering going SFF myself for a new X99 project. Just not too happy about the lack of connectors on a small build.
Thanks H, especially liked your genuine disbelief when you noticed there wasn't any M.2 connector present on that mobo 😀
EDIT: would it be possible to mount that cooling unit one story higher in that 250D?
I reckon that would look better, fit better (GPU wise anyway) and possibly get even lower temps. But it's up to the screws tho.
