Corsair Nautilus 500 Water Cooler Review

The Corsair Pod

Now that Legit Reviews has been writing computer hardware reviews for four years we are starting to see products come to life that were just an idea at one point in time. The latest water cooler from Corsair, the Nautilus 500, just happens to be one of those products. We first heard rumors of this product back in 2004 and saw our first cardboard mockup of it that same year. Later the designed moved from cardboard to a metal housing, followed by aluminum, and then ultimately plastic due to cost reasons. Below is an image of the original metal “Corsair Pod”. It was called Pod internally before the marketing department got their hands on the product and renamed it the Nautilus 500.

The below image we are including for fun and is a picture of one of the very first working prototypes of the Corsair Pod water cooler. Note that other than the external fan speed control switch on the Nautilus 500 all the features were on the prototype. This below image was taken in February 2005.

As you can see the Nautilus500 looks a bit differnt from the Pod, but the internals are nearly identical. This design is very close to the production version and included many of the same internal pieces that are found in the current model.

Now that we know what the Nautilus 500 is and some history behind it let’s compare the Nautilus 500 to the water coller that it is replacing, the HydroCool 200EX.