The Corsair H150i Pro RGB AIO Cooler Review: The Quiet Giant
by E. Fylladitakis on August 16, 2018 8:00 AM ESTTesting Results, Maximum Fan Speed
Our maximum speed testing is performed with both the fans and the pump of the kit powered via a 12V DC source. At this voltage, the speed of the pump and the fans should match the manufacturer’s ratings. As per Corsair's specifications, the ML120 fans included with this cooler should have a rotational speed of 1600±10% RPM. Our tachometer's reading was 1620 RPM, almost a perfect match, and all three fans were rotating at the same exact speed, indicating and exceptional quality manufacturing process with minimal variation.
| Core Temperature, Constant Thermal Load (Max Fan Speed) |
When having a look at the maximum thermal performance charts, the H150i Pro RGB is hardly impressive. It does land near the top of our charts but it cannot really outperform significantly smaller AIO coolers. The average thermal resistance of the Corsair H150i Pro RGB is 0.0731 °C/W, better than that of most AIO coolers that we have previously tested, but the performance difference between its smaller counterparts seems miniscule. Even Corsair's own H100i GTX matches the performance of the H150i Pro RGB, with an average thermal resistance of 0.0732 °C/W, whereas Alphacool's liquid cooling kit lands at 0.0532 °C/W and retains its massive performance gap compared to standard AIO coolers.
A careful look at our sound pressure level charts reveals the great advantage that the H150i Pro RGB has over smaller implementations. Even with its fans running at maximum speed, the noise level of the H150i Pro RGB is just 39.2 dB(A), a figure that is audible but generally considered comfortable. Furthermore, the pump is dead silent, without any perceptible high pitch "whining" noise that plagued earlier AIO cooler designs.
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Wolfclaw - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
I'll stick to my Arctic 240 with its 4 fans, £75 and keeps my R5-2600 cool and quiet !imaheadcase - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
I'm actually surprised Intel and AMD just don't ship small water AIO with retail cpu by now. I guess they are still afraid of the old "it has water it can mess stuff up" mentality.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
AMD did that with the 9590.Icehawk - Saturday, August 18, 2018 - link
I believe Intel also offered them at one point - not very good ones though.Orange_Swan - Tuesday, August 21, 2018 - link
to be fair with a 225w tdp it was probably cheaper than building a comparable air coolernpp - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
"The noise floor of our recording equipment is 30.2-30.4 dB(A), which represents a medium-sized room without any active noise sources."This is false and misleading, as is the whole table stating among others that anything below 35dBa is "virtually inaudible".
Really sad that silentpcreview.com is gone now, as are the days when such dubious and downright erroneous statements wouldn't have made their way into an anandtech review.
Oxford Guy - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
My favorite example is when the same review site that glosses over fan noise later gushes about the silence afforded by a fanless PC. Which is it? Either all those fans are "silent" and "inaudible" or they're not.Tell a tinnitus sufferer about silent PC fans. It is, for instance, very possible for a person to be able to tolerate many, much louder, sounds — like air conditioner fans and car trip noise, and yet get much worse tinnitus reaction problems from these supposedly silent/quiet/inaudible PC parts.
I've been waiting many years for a high-performance fanless case but it looks like the lastest one, the Calyos, is vaporware. Apparently, the designers have moved to a new startup to create more vaporware, albeit with worse specs.
Ryan Smith - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
So the standard that is usually quoted for a quiet room in a rural area is 30 dB(A).http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist2/projects/sixer/loud.pd...
In practice you won't find that rooms can get much quieter than that without using sound-absorbing designs, be it a recording studio or anechoic chamber.
Now if you have findings that say otherwise, we're more than happy to look at them. After all, we strive for accuracy. But what I can say for certainty is that none of our testing environments get below 30 dB(A).
npp - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
Ryan, this a review of the legendary Scythe Ninja done by SPCR in 2005, long before they built their hemi-anechoic chamber:https://bit.ly/2MA3g5E
As you can see, the ambient SPL was 18dBA (without room treatment) and the fan did rise up to about 22dBA, which according to the quoted data should be inaudible. Of course, if the noise floor in the room is 30dBa, one could go on and state that the cooler is silent, and this wouldn't be true.
I'm not trying to argue or split hairs here, but if you want to include SPL measurements, you should take them more seriously. A room with 30dBa noise floor isn't the best place to perform such measurements to begin with and makes judgement of the sound performance of various fans highly unreliable.
Now regarding what constitutes a quite room, this is really a subjective matter. The common consensus is around 20-30dBA, I personally would call 20dBa quite enough.
Diji1 - Friday, August 17, 2018 - link
>A room with 30dBa noise floor isn't the best place to perform such measurementsFair point but it's not as though most users are going to be using the product in super quiet spaces like that.