Corsair Hydro Series H80i GT AIO Liquid Cooler Review

By Steven Kean April 7, 2015

Corsair Hydro H80i GT Cooling Capabilities

During the benchmarking process, we will run the Intel i5-4690K at both a stock speed of 3.5Ghz and an easy overclock to 4.4GHz. This is a very moderate overclock, and spending more time you would most likely be able to overclock it a bit more.

To record the temperatures, Core Temp v.1.0 RC7 was used to log the temperature for 30 minutes while each application was being run. The temperatures on all cores was then averaged to provide a final temperature rating. The ambient temperature of the environment was 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21C). The Corsair H80i GT defaulted to Performance mode, which while a bit noisy, we left it on that setting for the testing.

Idle Temperatures

Prime 95 – In-Place Test

3DMark Firestrike Ultra

FarCry 4

Benchmark Results: The Corsair H80i GT cooled exactly as I expected. Comparing the H80i GT to the DeepCool Captain 120, the H80i GT wins hands down. On some of the tests, the OC temperature on the H80i GT was pretty close to the Captain 120’s temperature running at base clock speeds. When stepping up to a larger radiator such as the H105 Extreme, that’s where we start to see the difference.

Corsair H80i GT Power Usage

To measure power consumption, a P3 Kill-A-Watt meter was connected to the main power cable for the computer. For Idle conditions, the test system was allowed to sit at the desktop for 30 minutes without any additional software running. For the Load condition, we grabbed the power consumption while running the Prime95 test.

Benchmark Results: As you might expect, the idle power usage is pretty similar across the board for the number of fans and processor speed. Once the system is under a load, the power usage is fairly close to the other coolers. The Corsair H105 is probably the closest competition as it uses the same fans, and the H80i GT was more efficient when overclocked, but a little more power hungry at normal clock speeds.