Corsair’s new CPU cooler is looking to steal Noctua’s NH-D15 crown

Corsair has simply unveiled its newest air CPU cooler, the Corsair A115, and is claiming it’s succesful sufficient to outclass the present king of the hill, the Noctua NH-D15. The gargantuan cooler homes six heatpipes main to 2 heatsink stacks cooled by two 140mm followers.

Suffice to say, if this colossal Corsair cooler can reside as much as its claims it’s in with a powerful likelihood of taking a spot on our best CPU cooler information. Whereas the cooler is being formally unveiled at the moment – and is on the market to order proper now – it was additionally on present at CES, the place I received some hands-on time with the unit.

If there’s one factor the Corsair A115 has in frequent with the Noctua NH-D15, it’s that each these coolers are large. With two stacks of cooling fins and two 140mm followers, the entire unit is mainly a 140mm (roughly 5-inch) dice sitting above your CPU.

It’s whenever you see coolers like this that you simply actually admire why AIO liquid CPU coolers are so well-liked – they allow you to see the remainder of your {hardware} with out obstruction, they usually’re usually a lot simpler to put in. That mentioned, the brand new cooler matches fairly comfortably in Corsair’s new 2500X micro-ATX case, so it’s not solely large circumstances that may accommodate this cooler.

The place the A115 has the Noctua NH-D15 soundly crushed is in styling, as the brand new cooler has the followers and heatsinks sitting virtually completely aligned, making for a cleaner look. Each coolers can be found in all-black – in addition to the default Noctua brown – however the Corsair retains a sleeker look.

Serving to with set up, the A115 has followers that slide onto the heatsinks, they usually can truly be left in place sitting barely greater than default. This implies you possibly can accommodate additional tall reminiscence sticks, as an example.

As for the efficiency of the followers, they’re Corsair’s AF140 Elite fashions with “AirGuide” expertise. They’ve a set of anti-vortex vanes that counteract the rotation of the air coming off the fan, to be able to direct it extra cleanly by way of the cooling fins. Thanks additionally to fluid dynamic bearings these followers can hit simply 33.9dB whereas spinning at their peak velocity of 1,600rpm.

Appropriate with all current AMD and Intel CPU sockets, and coming with pre-applied Corsair XTM70 thermal paste, Corsair informed us that the A115 competes with the Noctua NH-D15 on AMD sockets, and really beats it on Intel sockets. Corsair defined to us that it’s because the contact plate is ever so barely convex, creating an excellent larger stress that advantages cooling Intel CPUs particularly.

Obtainable now, the Corsair A115 worth is $99, which is $20 cheaper than the MSRP for the usual NH-D15, and $30 cheaper than the black model. We’ve received a unit in able to assessment, so be careful for that showing very shortly. For extra of our ideas on CPU coolers, take a look at our best CPU coolers information.