Testing
Before you do anything with your H150i PRO you will want to navigate over to Corsair’s website and get yourself the latest version of Corsair Link. This is their system management software and it puts you right in the pilot’s seat with full control over your whole setup. It even has a mode called Zero RPM which much like modern GPUs, completely turns off the fans when they are not required. If you want to learn more about Corsair Link Check out our review of the H150i Pro in the Testing section.
Under the Configure tab you will find all the settings that you need for each of the items listed to the left panel of the screen. Select from your fans, pump, or LEDs, and drill down to set things up the way you like them.
Selecting LED in configure allows you to change all the available settings for the pump LEDs. Dropping the tab for Mode gives you a selection between Static, Blink, Color Pulse, Color Shift, Rainbow, and Temperature. You can see the range of different color options we were able to achieve below.
Before we get to testing we click profile and switch Corsair Link to Performance mode to ensure we get the maximum performance out of the cooler.
The test rig consists of the following parts:
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H
Video Card: Zotac 560 Ti
Memory: Samsung Green MV-3V4G3D/US – 16GB
Power Supply: Corsair TX950
Storage: Mushkin ECO2 240GB Running Windows 7 64bit
Cooling: Corsair H150i Pro
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe
As always testing was done using Intel Burn Test (IBT) with the AVX instruction set. The reason to use this instead of Prime95 with this setup is that it pushes our i7 3770K a whole lot harder. This gives us a better sense of extreme load temps. Most of the testing was done at the max memory setting for a single pass. While admittedly this in no way would qualify the chip as stable while overclocked, it gives us a realistic idea of what temperatures the CPU will be hitting. Additionally we are going to run 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme to give you a realistic idea of performance while gaming.
Our baseline was established using a bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 with the 3770K on stock settings:
Ambient temps: 22.22C/72F
Idle temps: 38.75C/101.75F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 63.5C/146.3F core average
The first thing we did was to test the cooler with stock motherboard/CPU settings:
Ambient temps: 18.33°C/65°F
Idle temps: 24°C/75.2°F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 53.5°C/128.3°F core average
*Our ambient temperature is 3.89°C cooler than baseline, we’ll be adding that to all our results to adjust for the change*
Immediately we see that the H115i PRO is in a different league from our baseline cooler. In fact it performs 10°C better underload. Let’s go ahead and overclock the CPU and see what kind of results we get.
Here are our results for our i7 3770K @ 4.5ghz with 1.248V vCore:
Ambient temps: 18.33°C/65°F
IBT temps: 70.5°C/158.9°F with the two hottest cores hitting 73°C
Once again we adjust for ambient and find the cooler averaging 74.39°C when compared with the rest of our test units. While this is really good and puts it just ahead of competitors like the NZXT Kraken X62, it doesn’t really match up with the new King of the AiO round up the H150i PRO. No reason to be discouraged, let’s get on with our testing and run the H115i PRO through 3DMark to see how it does in game and overclocked.
Ambient temps: 18.33°C/65°F
3DMARK: 53°C/127.4°F with the hottest single core hitting 55°C
53°C adjusted to 56.89 kinda says it all. This cooler will keep your CPU frosty as it crushes through the physics of your favorite interactive pixel art.
Acoustically the H115i PRO isn’t there. It certainly explains a bit why the cooler doesn’t match the performance of the bigger 360mm rad equipped H150i PRO. If we gave an award simply for how silent a cooler is, the slow spinning 140mm ML fans win straight up. At full speed they just don’t make any sound that really registers. To top it off, you can enable Zero RPM mode and the fans will shut down completely when temps stay within the set range.