Final Thoughts and Rating

The purists among us will appreciate the fact that the H110 lacks LEDs and fan controllers, while others will bemoan the fact that the second-rung H100i carries a more comprehensive feature set.

It took a while for Corsair to produce a successor to 2011's Hydro Series H100, but good things come to those who wait and we now have not one, but two viable upgrade paths.

In the 240mm corner, the Hydro Series H100i offers Corsair Link integration and remains one of the best all-in-one solutions on the market, and in the 280mm corner, the new Hydro Series H110 rightfully takes its place atop of the ladder as the company's best-performing cooler to date.

An increase in radiator size is an obvious route to greater cooling potential, but by employing a 280mm rad and dual 1,500RPM, 140mm fans, Corsair is easily able to strike the right notes; the H110 offers greater cooling performance than the H100i, yet it's also designed to run quieter.

However, despite these two key advantages, the H110 doesn't win on all fronts. First and foremost, there's a level of simplicity that users will either love or hate. The purists among us will appreciate the fact that the H110 lacks LEDs and fan controllers, while others will bemoan the fact that the second-rung H100i carries a more comprehensive feature set.

As it stands, it's difficult to choose between the company's two high-end offerings and, if you're struggling to make up your mind, our advice is to let your decision-making rest solely on space constraints. The Hydro Series H100i is still a great choice for most builds, but if you're certain your chassis can accommodate the full 280mm with 20mm fan spacing, the Hydro Series H110 is a step up in terms of performance.

Both are extreme solutions, but the shuffled feature set leaves the Hydro Series range without a cooler that ticks each and every box. Surely it's only a matter of time until we see Corsair produce a 280mm cooler with all the bells and whistles?

The Good

Excellent cooling performance
Sleek design
Low-noise fans
Good build quality
Five-year warranty

The Bad

Expensive for a CPU cooler
Lacks Corsair Link integration

HEXUS Rating

Corsair Hydro Series H110

HEXUS Awards

Corsair Hydro Series H110

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Corsair Hydro Series H110 CPU cooler is available to purchase from Scan Computers*.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.

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Literally ordered mine yesterday. Price wasn't much between H100i and H110 so I'm glad I went for it. Currently have a D14 and a i5 3570k that I can't get stable at 4.5 GHz under 90'c with prime 95. Hoping to see 4.6 GHz with those temps, airflow isn't the problem, I believe my chip is a pretty crap one. I may resort to delidding.

Confused - do those fans stick at one speed or are they variable ? If they are variable , what speed do they go down too.

I want a cooler that is silent (hush silent) when there is little to no load.

Bought one of these a couple of weeks back - as others have said, price was actually less that H100i.

Snag, though, is that this is *very* fussy about enclosure - just having 2x 140mm fan mounts next to each other doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to mount the radiator without fouling on other parts of the enclosure - two chassis I tried, top mounting the rad snagged on the front drive cage, due to fan mount positions. Of course, you could drill/mod your own, and get it all to fit, but that rather defeats the point of these ready-to-go solutions.

If you're considering purchase, check your chassis make/model/revision carefully, unless you're handy with a Dremel!

PS, to answer Brewster, I'd need to get the unit out of the box again, but Corsair tend to ship their coolers with 3pin plug fan connectors, so unless your motherboard can regulate voltage on 3pin fan connectors, it may well run at full speed, at all times :( The “money no object” solution is probably to add 2x Noctua fans (4-pin PWM controlled) to replace any bundled 3pin fans. That said, most modern boards do allow some control of 3pin fans. The pump can also be noisy on Corsair coolers (orginal H100 was horrible for this) so you may wish to regulate power to that, too, although some may regard that as “not good practice”. To be honest, for quiet computing, I'd buy a Corsair H55, and consider swapping the (already quiet) fan for a Noctua. Alternatively, the CM Seidon 120 is significantly cheaper, and much easier to fit. Again, couple it with a suitable quiet PWM fan, and you've got a very low noise cooling system for quite an affordable price. And yes, I'm noise sensitive myself. Edit - Seidon has PWM fan in box, but not the quietest.

I considered getting the H110 but it doesn't fit in my case :(

However I found an interesting review that standardises everything except the radiator, none of this standard configuration nonsense. The results highlight the radiators performance and one of the liquid cooling loops they tested far out performed all the others which is what I will be getting. The Swiftech H220 was 6 degrees cooler than the Corsair H110 at load and it has the added benefit of being refillable in the future and the option of adding more radiators to the loop to cool other components. It is more expensive and I can only find it at SpecialTech but to me it is worth the cost for its future flexibility and better radiator.

The Swiftech H220: http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/Swiftech-H220-Compact-Drive-II-PWM-Water-Cooling-Kit-pid-17411.html

The review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVNuN0UcYUQ

The results in a google spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlPSGh26Ne0XdHZweHoxckRqazBvM0RTMW5GSFZNRmc#gid=0

Noxvayl
The Swiftech H220 was 6 degrees cooler than the Corsair H110

I've seen another review where the Swiftech came in third against the Kraken X60 and the Corsair H100i in the temps table but 1st in low noise. The other impressions I got was that it more case friendly than either with the upgrade advantages you outlined.