An effective and quick all-in-one liquid cooler that’s easy to install
Long one of the major players bringing liquid cooling out of the geeky world of overclocking and into the mainstream, Corsair has led the way with a range of AIO coolers that are easy to install and offer no worries over maintenance. The H110i GT is the latest addition to its Hydro range, and sits between the feature-rich H100i and the performance H110 coolers.
Although the H110i GT is in the 280mm radiator class, the whole radiator assembly is somewhat larger at 322mm long – so this isn’t a cooler for the more compact case. The radiator is home to the two 140mm SP140L high static pressure fans. And if you’re wondering what the holes in the inner frames of the fans are for, they’re to add your own preference of LEDs, of course.
Installation is pretty straightforward. Well, a doddle actually. Four standoffs are screwed into the backplate, the pump mount bracket is placed over the pump, and then the whole unit is fixed in place by four thumbscrews. We had a bit of a shock when the standoffs were screwed into the backplate – we’d expected things to be held tightly in place, so were alarmed to find this was far from the case. A quick glance in the manual revealed the “backplate may still have some leeway depending on your motherboard”, so that’s alright then. Leeway. Phew.
The one thing you do need to make sure of before you install the H110i GT is that you have a spare SATA power connector, as this is what the pump uses for power. There’s also a 3-pin cable from the pump that needs connecting to the CPU fan connector on the motherboard so it can report pump RPM. And finally there’s the USB cable that plugs into the pump and into a USB header on the motherboard – this is for the Corsair Link utility. The whole lot needs plugging in for the software and hardware to play nice together.
Corsair’s Link software is a very useful tool, allowing you to pretty much control how the H110i GT works to a very fine degree. The speed of the pump can be altered, as can the two cooling fans. For the fans there’s a wide choice of pre-set options, or they can be finely tuned using a custom curve. It even lets you configure the pump’s LED colouring. There’s hours of tinkering to be had here, if you’re that way inclined.
At the i7-4770K stock clock the fans ran pretty quiet, a quick glance at Link showing an average speed of just 519rpm at the default setting. At 100 per cent load they’re still almost as quiet, spinning away at an average 718rpm. At an overclocked 4.5GHz idling, the fans were spinning at much the same speed as default. However, loading the overclocked processor to 100 per cent got the fans spinning at around 1,200rpm, and noticeably louder. But more importantly, the cooler was struggling to keep the processor below 90 degrees.
Changing the fans’ profile to Performance mode in Corsair Link saw them running at an average of 1,800rpm and becoming pretty loud again, but vitally dropping the CPU core temp down below 90 degrees. Also in Performance mode the cooler was stunningly quick to get the cores down to the idle temperature of the overclocked processor when it was switched from 100 per cent load. And in an overclocked rig, that’s important.
So the Hydro H110i GT fits neatly between its two siblings, while its ease of installing should calm the nerves of anybody new to the dark art of liquid cooling. And by using the Corsair Link software it can be tuned perfectly for any system, which is handy as the fans are noisy when they’re set to run at a high rpm. – Simon Crisp
SPECIFICATIONS
Socket compatibility - Intel and AMD
Water block - Pure copper
Fan(s) - 2 x 140mm
Radiator dimensions (L x W x H) - 140 x 322 x 27mm
Warranty - Five years