Corsair A500 Dual Fan CPU Cooler

[gamefoo21]

That's a brutal base finish. The lack of clearance on the mounting is really troublesome.

I think the reason you don't see a lot of 8mm heatpipes in use is because of the clearance problems you encountered.

That's no good for a production product. The price is a bit hard to swallow for what you get as well. IMHO

 

[Xuper]

I prefer Deepcool Assassin III

 

[XL-R8R]

*snip*

The lengthy reply noted; does the order of which the products are ranked not seem a bit odd when they're all quoted at 40dB?


Statistically speaking - and with your equipment at hand taken into consideration - none of the 40dB coolers are worse or better than each other in the chart... so, why is one above the other?

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

The lengthy reply noted; does the order of which the products are ranked not seem a bit odd when they're all quoted at 40dB?


Statistically speaking - and with your equipment at hand taken into consideration - none of the 40dB coolers are worse or better than each other in the chart... so, why is one above the other?

And would your issues with it matter if it was only 1 colored bar rather than 2? I didn't write the software I just use it. But yeah if it was a single cooler with only 1 data point your issue would be pretty much moot. Instead be thankful the data is presented honestly rather than the issue being buried it or tiptoed around. Trust me yeah it can be annoying when it does stuff like that. But thats just the way the cookie crumbles.

 

[TechLurker]

I really love the fan mount system. Other fan makers should consider adopting similar; if only to make life much easier in securing fans as well as easily adjusting for RAM height, especially in the confines of small-midsized ATX mobo cases.

 

[Chrispy_]

I really love the fan mount system. Other fan makers should consider adopting similar

Yes. Secufirm has become the standard design to copy for mounting a heatsink. Corsair's rails should become a standard for mounting fans.
Sadly, Corsair are likely to have patented it.

 

[Keullo-e]

Props for having ML120s, they're awesome fans. Those already are worth ~30EUR.

 

[W1zzard]

none of the 40dB coolers are worse or better than each other in the chart... so, why is one above the other?

Correct, there needs to be some sequence to the presented entries though. I guess I could alpha-sort identical entries in our graphmaking software?

 

[tussinman]

For the same price you can get the Noctua U12A with the same performance, fraction of the size and won't make your ears bleed. You can also get the Scythe Fuma 2 although it looks more bland but costs 40% less.

And even crazier comparison is the $40 Artic Freezer 34 Duo.

It has better ram clearance, is quitier, and is only about 2 degrees hotter.

$60 cheaper than the A500 !!! (I don't know what corsair is thinking).

 

[XL-R8R]

Correct, there needs to be some sequence to the presented entries though. I guess I could alpha-sort identical entries in our graphmaking software?

Maybe the order could be based on dB firstly, then date reviewed secondly?

It seems more appropriate then alphabetically.



(lots of 'ly' in this message!)

 

[W1zzard]

date reviewed

Not a bad idea, but the graphmaker doesn't have access to this information, alphabetically also seems the more natural order for people that are less familiar with our charts

 

[FreedomEclipse]

The fans are really bad

No they're not. They are just really loud at full RPM.

In fact they got the TPU 'Highly Recommended' award back in 2017 - though this was the RGB version but its still a corsair ML120. They are probably more suited to pushing air on radiators due to their static pressure rating but they should still move a tonne of air at lower rpm because they are Static Pressure orientated fans.

Even Noctua A12x25's are loud at full RPM though maybe the sound profile is different compared to the Corsair MLs due to the fin design. The Noctua almost copies the fin design of the Legendary Nidec GTs while the Corsairs are going with the oldschool fins that have been around since the dawn of time to brute force air through heatsinks and radiators like Delta fans.

A lot of people including myself have been using corsair ML fans for AIOs and watercooling without much issue. I use ML140s as case fans with profile set to silent in my bios. I can just about hear them when gaming. In fact, the Silent Wings fans on my Dark Rock Pro4 are probably louder than all my corsair MLs when gaming as i have the profile set to standard.

 

[AtlasRush]

Sorry for being late to the party, but I think the main issue is that the 8700K has TIM under the IHS, de facto creating a bottleneck in terms of heat transfer to the IHS. Indeed, many coolers from very different price targets are weirdly close to each other.
With that said, this cooler has too many flaws: heavy, loud, big, expensive. It's like an NH-U12A knock-off that somehow matches its performance by just having "delta fans" stuck on it. The hole in the middle breaks linear airflow, the small number of heatpipes causes them to thermally saturate because of the heat concentration, the distance between fans and fins causes turbulence, and so on...

With better designed fans, a couple of small holes (instead of a CAVITY in the middle) in the fins for screwing it down, side rails instead of frontal rails to clear the gap fan-fin, and maybe a higher number of less thick fins they could solve all of these problems... And let's not ignore the fact that it has a rail system "thought" for quad channel platforms but probably doesn't have enough cooling power to keep them cool either.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Sorry for being late to the party, but I think the main issue is that the 8700K has TIM under the IHS, de facto creating a bottleneck in terms of heat transfer to the IHS. Indeed, many coolers from very different price targets are weirdly close to each other.
With that said, this cooler has too many flaws: heavy, loud, big, expensive. It's like an NH-U12A knock-off that somehow matches its performance by just having "delta fans" stuck on it. The hole in the middle breaks linear airflow, the small number of heatpipes causes them to thermally saturate because of the heat concentration, the distance between fans and fins causes turbulence, and so on...

With better designed fans, a couple of small holes (instead of a CAVITY in the middle) in the fins for screwing it down, side rails instead of frontal rails to clear the gap fan-fin, and maybe a higher number of less thick fins they could solve all of these problems... And let's not ignore the fact that it has a rail system "thought" for quad channel platforms but probably doesn't have enough cooling power to keep them cool either.

And you obviously didnt read the review.

Images below straight from my review. The cooler sucks because Corsair used a 4 heatpipe design that is likely only truly capable of around 50 or so watts x2 (8mm heatpipes) 25x2 for the 6mm for an effective heat transfer of maybe 150-180watts not 250. Hilariously enough multiple review outlets are now discovering the issues on various test platforms. Its just not a good cooler.

Hardware Canucks even tried lapping the base flat to improve performance along with using different fans and nothing really improved the situation.

Base is far from flat with HDT designs being cheaper, base does not conform to intel keep-out zone guidlines, and it needs extremely loud fans to provide even middling performance results.

And if your gonna blame the IHS / 8700K why does the Scythe Fuma 2 which is smaller and like 12 dBA quieter manage to rival it with perfect memory clearance etc while also costing $40 less? Bad design is a bad design that simple.

Spoiler

 

[AtlasRush]

Oh I'm sorry, I read the review, and I agree on the fact that this cooler sucks. I was just pointing out that results are better than they should be also because of the CPU used. Fins wise, fans wise, heatpipe configuration wise, it should score much worse.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Oh I'm sorry, I read the review, and I agree on the fact that this cooler sucks. I was just pointing out that results are better than they should be also because of the CPU used. Fins wise, fans wise, heatpipe configuration wise, it should score much worse.

I see you edits so were in agreement lol or rather my phone likely cut out part of it (need a new one bad apps dont load or crash constantly) But yeah the biggest problem this cooler has is the wasted space in the middle and the base. an all copper base soldered to the heatpipes would fix the clearance issues and likely improve performance. Having worked on some design with other companies its amazing what a little extra copper on the base can do for thermal conductivity also with a proper base the gaps would diminish creating improved heat transfer as well. that said i think the cooler would have been better served using an Odd heatpipe arrangement 3x 6mm and 2x 8mm.

With an arrangement like below:
6 / 8 / 6 / 8 / 6

Then eliminate the gap in the middle just leave two holes for the mounting screws and call it a day doesn't need the big open cavity that wastes potential surface area for heat dissipation.

The above would raise the coolers TDP to be closer to around 200-watts and with a solid copper base performance improvement would have seen it likely improve quite significantly. Sadly I feel this was a project that didn't get enough internal testing before being released.

 

[AtlasRush]

I didn't edit anything, you can see for yourself
EDIT: you even quoted me, if I edited something my text and your quote would be different lol
EDIT 2: yeah, it cut you off 'cause I basically agree with what you said. I think 6x6 mm heatpipes would have helped even more!

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

I didn't edit anything, you can see for yourself
EDIT: you even quoted me, if I edited something my text and your quote would be different lol
EDIT 2: yeah, it cut you off 'cause I basically agree with what you said. I think 6x6 mm heatpipes would have helped even more!

Yeah phone likely cut off the wall of text. Got a Samsung S6 that all screwy now. Likely due to the battery screen randomly shuts off phone dies at 60% battery only to reboot with 10%. Plug it in battery jumpes to 40% but phone will crash. But im too lazy to go to my computer bed is comfy.

For the record only part of your text i saw was the first sentence dealing with 8700k IHS.

So yeah my bad. My apologies!