Corsair H55 mini review

[Howie]

I picked this unit up for £40 a few months ago and I've been staring at it ever since trying to find the courage and motivation to install it.

I backed out of the flight night to go to the gym with some friends earlier and they all cancelled on me at the last minute (I said they would Eddie!) so I thought right, time to bite the proverbial bullet.

First thing was the installation and we were off to a bad start immediately. Seriously, I've bought flat pack furniture that was easier to assemble than the back plate on this thing.

I grounded myself before whipping off the old CPU cooler (Hyper TX3 Evo) and popped the CPU out before cleaning all the old thermal paste off it.

Then things started to get awkward. I realised I didn't have a big enough slot in my case to get the back plate on my motherboard.

Took the graphics card out and unscrewed the motherboard, tilted it over on its side with all the power cables weaving throughout the case and still connected. I managed to squeeze the backplate into position and stick it to the back of the motherboard with the sticky pads provided.

After lots of huffing and puffing I lined up the holes and screwed the motherboard back into place as best as I could.

Then I had to remove the rear case fan to install the radiator and cooling fan. It was a bit of a faff with washers and long screws and the rest of the pump hanging off but it actually wasn't as awkward as it sounds.

Connecting the pump head and tightening it all up wasn't too complicated after I watched a video on my phone to figure out how the hell to do it. It seemed to have some idiot proof safety feature so you can't over tighten it (either that or I just stripped the threads).

After bending a few capacitors and generally manhandling my PC I was pretty worried it wouldn't turn on, and true to form the first power on resulted in a hard reboot. I mashed the ram with the palm of my hand like an angry gorilla and low and behold the thing booted.

Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for -performance!

The good news is that if you're a fan of jets and jet engines, you'll absolutely love this thing. It sounds just like one!

The fan isn't a PWM one so it goes like the absolute clappers all the time, every time.

It will make you want to overclock the nuts off whatever CPU you're running because god knows it'll sound like you already have regardless.

I apprehensively loaded HWMonitor and fired up Prime95 small FFT's torture test and then I saw the temperatures.

This is after running at 1.28V core and 4.2GHz flat out for an hour and a half.

Attachment 2310

For comparison, the Hyper TX3 Evo hit 75°C after a few minutes, with the side panel off my case for extra cooling before I got scared and quit.

The thing's is a beast. It's a pain in the ass to install and it's loud as hell but I love it.

Two thumbs up!

EDIT! What I thought was the unit is actually one of my LOUD ASS case fans with knackered bearings. The unit itself is actually very quiet!

[Eddie]

Throw a different fan on and it'll be quieter. The corsair AIO coolers are very good, I'm running the H100i.

[Howie]

Turned out it was one of my case fans that was making most of the noise. I'm probably going to pick up a few quiet ones and swap out the old ones sometime.