COOL by Corsair

The components - III

With all the major components taken care of, whilst I may have had a moan here and there, if I'm honest there are no big disappointments. The little things can make or break a product though, so let's make sure they're up to stratch.



The first item worthy of mention is the fan used to cool the radiator. Whilst this costs just a fraction of the kit's total, a wrong choice can make for poor performance and you might well be deafened while you're experiencing it! Thankfully Corsair didn't cut any corners and provide an excellent and very quiet 3W Panaflo fan, top marks.



If the radiator and fan live outside the case, how do you get power and water to them? Corsair's answer is a pass through PCI slot cover. The fan is fitted with a special connector which plugs into the cover which then plugs into a normal Molex connector. Simple and acceptable. However, the water pipes aren't ideal - there's no way to remove the kit from your case without draining it first, which isn't entirely easy.

The tubing provided with the kit has a 3/8" inner diameter, plenty for cooling a simple water block and Corsair provide more than enough to install this kit in a full tower case. It is a little prone to kinking on tight bends so Corsair have provided some plastic springs to reinforce the tubing on such areas, it's nice they anticipated the problem and provided an easy solution. Well done them.

With everything installed, it's time to put some water in the system. Corsair provide a single serving bottle of liquid which contains all the chemicals you'll need to protect your system and add a green tint to the water, but it's not sufficient to fill the system, you'll need to buy some deionised water to go in there too. It's a shame they couldn't have made the bottle big enough to fill the system, it wouldn't have taken much.