I bought my first H60 back in 2011 and something broke inside it after about half a year. CPU temperatures rose like crazy, the hose was boiling hot to about half way and the reservoirs were cold to the touch. So something stopped the fluids from circulating. Either corroded gunk or air trapped inside. That AiO set was RMAed and the new one started developing problems about a week ago: Rattling pump, rapidly rising CPU temperatures, reduced performance, etc. I'd say these AiO closed-loop sets have a lifespan of about four years or so until the pump starts to wear out or something builds up in the loop.
The gas was the evaporated coolant. That's how air conditioning works. There is a liquid inside that evaporates at a certain temperature (less than room temperature). The gas then goes through the radiator where the fans dissipate the heat and turn the gas back into a liquid. The mixture you are pouring out is just the other liquid in the mixture so you don't have 100% gas running through the system at all times. Heat dissipates through liquid better than gas which is why they add both a coolant and adjunct liquid that evaporates at a much higher temp.
After watching this i won't buy Corsair AIO liquid cooling. No o-ring seating grooves, cheap motor with noisy bearing, gunk building fluid.... thanks man :D
I had my 2600K with stock cooler @4.2Ghz and it ran fine for over a year. only goes to 90c when doing prime95, but even folding it just hovers ~85c. The intel coolers is pretty quiet, unlike the amd wafer thin stock cooler fan. Now running 4.8Ghz ~75c on antec 920 cooler.
Thx a mill, Vids like these are what makes TH-cam great. Curious and knowledgeable people using their brain to investigate, analyse and sharing their experience. It might sound pretentious but I think that's the explanation to why this video is so popular... That and the fact that there is quite a lot of ppl with broken Corsair systems ;)
Great teardown! Wish you would do this way of tear down for more watercoolers. For those who don't know, corsair watercoolers are made by Asetek (as well as many other brands).
The most common problem with this coolers is that the coil that is under the circuit board has a very thin wire (0.15mm). So it is very easy or to break or loose contact with the board. Of course it is fixable , but no one will risk to open it and solder the wires. I fixed it because i opened it on my own and a gave it to someone how could make a this thin soldering because it was difficult. Now it works better than before it broke down.....
normal custom liquid cooling systems need coolant changes every 2 years but the point of closed loop ones like this is to never need refilling last at least 5 years before wearing out, they actually have a warranty for 5 years so any to last any less than that would be a defective product.
Great video! Exactly the information I was looking for to attempt a repair on my 6yr old Corsair Cwch80. Thank you for the upload. Answered a ton of questions and will help enormously =) !
subbed and liked,really enjoyed this video even tho i didnt understand much of the part where you were talking about the electronic bits,resistors,leads and so on,but its nice to know how the pump works :)
Thanks for this, it gives me a very good indication why my CPU heat is sometimes as low as 29 Oc and then 48-55 Oc. The fan must stick, so now I take the side of the case off given the block a few light knocks and would you believe it, the temp drops to 29 Oc again. I guess that "gunk" I saw is a CPU killer?
coolant fluid MUST enter the rotor on the center of it, other way it would be a turbine instead of a pump, so, fluid circulation must be the other way around, Low temperature fluid arrives to the cooper heat spreader on its periferia and run all the way to the core, passing through the fins and elevating it temperature in the process, (removing heat from the cpu) then it reaches the center and slips through the hole moving on to the center of the rotor, the the rotor impels it to its own periferia, rising fluids pressure and pumping it to the radiator, where it will cools down and continue to the intake of the water block to repeat the process.
I have a couple of these, one is an H60 and the other an H80. The main issue I find is that this motor/impeller design is not as robust as older designs. It it gets off balance for any reason, it will vibrate a lot and make it almost unusable as far as noise is concerned. The H80 is silent and has been for years but I had to pull the H60 out of the PC I was using it on and replace it due to excessive noise and vibration. I'm still trying to see if I can fix it but haven't round what is wrong with it yet.
It appears that the blue material on the copper CPU plate may be RTV sealant. It is commonly used in industry as a backup sealant & to hold primary gaskets in place (the box shaped O-Ring) during assembly.
I'm not sure if anyone else commented on the 2 pin connection on the side of the Pump/Block, anyway I think it is to connect an early basic version of the LINK system to control fan speed automatically when temps increase . They advertised this and the H100/H1OOi as having LINK, but you had to spend about another £50 to get it separately.=(
The Aviation and Aerospace industry is mostly Standard. I neither agree or disagree with your comment but just a FYI. "the rest of the world" doesn't necessarily use Metric.
How old was this pump in the video? The gas is most likely hydrogen as a corrosion byproduct. And just to clarify for the people asking, the anti-freeze is propylene glycol based.
Oil isn't mixed into the coolant, nor is there any antifreeze, the liquid stays quite warm considering it is in constant contact with a hot CPU, since there is a single 120mm radiator cooling performance is quite poor, the liquid is just distilled water
I know that. On the other hand, I don't have any compunction about using a paper towel to wipe off the UV filter I have in front of the lens to protect it in just this sort of situation.
antifreeze isnt there to stop the liquid from freezing while under operation, its there to stop it freezing while its turned off, the cpu isnt there to warm it up if you turn the pc on in a cold room.
how easy would it be to change the pipes on the closed loop water coolers? i have a msi gaming edition closed loop water cooler, but i would love to change the pipes so that they are see through!!
Hmmn was thinking about putting a bigger radiator on my h60, not so sure I want to after watching this video. I did that to an enermax 240 aio and expanded it to a 360 radiator, connected it to a reservoir, and works perfect. However, the enermax uses gaskets and isn't pressurized
There's actually a rather silly story there, for why I bought a 2600 over a 2600K. Basically, I wanted to experiment with VT-d. The 2600 has VT-d enabled, whereas the 2600K does not. So after all that, I wound up with a 2600. I then proceeded to buy a motherboard with a BIOS that doesn't support VT-d (it requires BIOS-level support to work properly). Derp. Oh well, it's not like there are many virtualization programs that support VT-d anyways.
22:58 You have it wrong it's not need mass etc. it's osculating because of coils are energised in sequence. The base is moving to finding neutral position between magnetic filed. Because base it's not attached to anything it's move instead of shaft. Check DC motors.
The idea is that you can decouple the heat-dissipating element (The radiator) from the heat-generating element (the CPU). Basically, you're somewhat limited in maximum heat-sink size just by the fact that it has to mount to the motherboard. ----- As an aside, water is an **excellent** thermal medium. Assuming proper circulation (e.g. a pump), it's WAY better then a heatpipe.
How do i disconnect the damn hose from the radiator while being able to put them back like on the water pump assembly since i want an easier way to refill the liquid without air bubbles
I think the audio is way off at 08:00 (and before probably). But a really nice cooler. I believe Corsair are a quality brand of computer parts, and that goes to show here. I wouldn't expect otherwise for such watercooling parts..
nice video, saved me pulling one apart myself :D might be an idea to get yourself some nitrile gloves though man, those things cost next to nothing and its worth it when dealing with fluids and stuff, im sure most cooling fluid is safe but i still dont fancy getting random junk on my skin. take care man, good video.
sorry but fins like this are impossible to mold. The liquid coppe solidifies way to fast for fins like this. You can mill this fins but the most common way is spark eroding.
Woow, so the problem with these is the corrosion of the copper in the thin stripes where the coolant makes contact. In the end the flow decreases drastically cause of this.
Hey! i've seen your vid a few times and decided to ask for some help. i have an H60, and my pump is acting up, i took it apart and when i connect it to the power the pump will make a few strange sounds, once you manually turn it though, itll start spinning and even if you stop it, it'll restart. what could the problem be? i can't really use it if i have to start the pump manually.... what do?
I wonder: why would you ever use water cooling? The only function it seems to serve is to increase the thermal impedance from the CPU heatspreader to air... I mean, heatpipes are much better than convection by water, like an order of magnitude.
I have the same cooler and i wanted to ask if there is a way to fix it somehow, it has something to do with that small orange thermal meter you said in the end of the video. is there a way to fix it ?
Huh. Well, all I know is that water-cooling has been a domain of crazy PC overclockers for more then a decade now. And indeed there is a *lot* of discussion on the most effective way to thermally couple the water to the heat-source. As for the radiator size, well all I can say is that Corsair makes multiple models with the same waterblock, but different radiator sizes (H60 H80 H100), and the H60 is indeed the smallest. It still gets decent reviews, and is better then most stock heatsinks, tho
i have the next generation of this, the cooling performance is rather poor for its noiselevel, way worse then my ARCTIC Freezer XTREME Rev. 2, which was actually less then half the price of the H60... Do you guys think it would hurt if i carefully screw of the baseplate and look for any debree in the fins? i mean, the pressure that is in there would escape, otherwise i should be able to put it together as it was... do you think the pressure does actually have a valid reason to be there and is needed for cooling, or is it just something that builds up with time and can be released no problem?
I dunno about that, My i7-2600 has been running fine on the stock heatsink for more then a year. I don't overclock, though. Really, it's just a matter of what you want to do. I don't particularly feel the need to overclock, and I don't have noise problems (my GPU is much, MUCH louderO.
so in the end your cooling capacity gets limited by the size and efficiency of the airflow through the radiator, not the stuff carrying the heat from cpu to radiator...
That is the h80 not the h60 :) and also I dont think that is a beeper for the pump its a water inlet so you can bleed the air out as someone replaced the tubes on one with clear and added red dye and used that to add the dye and remaining water.
But what use is using a closed-loop system with such a small, high impedance radiator then :P doesnt make sense As for water as a thermal medium: no... it's pretty bad compared to heatpipes, but the reasons are quite a bit more complex. It mostly boils down to the fact that water is a very bad conductor *but* a very good storing medium of heat, so you need high surface area and/or mass flow rate to get similar performance. I should write this up somewhere other than YT comments...
not overclocking is like throwing processing performance away, most modern motherboards have a decent amount of overclockability and even if you dont have a K series processor you still have the ability to overclock, the problem with stock coolers are both their cooling ability and noise... youre basically throwing money away... even an H60 is way better than stock
Please provide any coherent reason at all why I should not take things apart.
Fascinating. Always love to understand what I bought. Thanx
WELL, HOLY SHIT!! IT WAS UNDER PRESSURE!!!!!! rofl
Very informative. I was wondering how this closed system worked. NOW I KNOW! Thank you
I bought my first H60 back in 2011 and something broke inside it after about half a year. CPU temperatures rose like crazy, the hose was boiling hot to about half way and the reservoirs were cold to the touch. So something stopped the fluids from circulating. Either corroded gunk or air trapped inside. That AiO set was RMAed and the new one started developing problems about a week ago: Rattling pump, rapidly rising CPU temperatures, reduced performance, etc.
I'd say these AiO closed-loop sets have a lifespan of about four years or so until the pump starts to wear out or something builds up in the loop.
The gas was the evaporated coolant. That's how air conditioning works. There is a liquid inside that evaporates at a certain temperature (less than room temperature). The gas then goes through the radiator where the fans dissipate the heat and turn the gas back into a liquid. The mixture you are pouring out is just the other liquid in the mixture so you don't have 100% gas running through the system at all times. Heat dissipates through liquid better than gas which is why they add both a coolant and adjunct liquid that evaporates at a much higher temp.
After watching this i won't buy Corsair AIO liquid cooling. No o-ring seating grooves, cheap motor with noisy bearing, gunk building fluid.... thanks man :D
That's the older H60, I've got one and it's silent as hell and my temps are low(below 55)
I had my 2600K with stock cooler @4.2Ghz and it ran fine for over a year. only goes to 90c when doing prime95, but even folding it just hovers ~85c. The intel coolers is pretty quiet, unlike the amd wafer thin stock cooler fan. Now running 4.8Ghz ~75c on antec 920 cooler.
Thx a mill, Vids like these are what makes TH-cam great.
Curious and knowledgeable people using their brain to investigate, analyse and sharing their experience.
It might sound pretentious but I think that's the explanation to why this video is so popular... That and the fact that there is quite a lot of ppl with broken Corsair systems ;)
Thanks for posting this video. I just installed a Corsair H55 cpu cooler in my computer and its nice knowing exactly how it works. :)
Great teardown! Wish you would do this way of tear down for more watercoolers. For those who don't know, corsair watercoolers are made by Asetek (as well as many other brands).
Well that was uplifting to know it's not cheap rubbish and for what it is made pretty decently. Thanks for the tear down and money shot hehe.
The most common problem with this coolers is that the coil that is under the circuit board has a very thin wire (0.15mm). So it is very easy or to break or loose contact with the board. Of course it is fixable , but no one will risk to open it and solder the wires. I fixed it because i opened it on my own and a gave it to someone how could make a this thin soldering because it was difficult. Now it works better than before it broke down.....
normal custom liquid cooling systems need coolant changes every 2 years but the point of closed loop ones like this is to never need refilling last at least 5 years before wearing out, they actually have a warranty for 5 years so any to last any less than that would be a defective product.
what i learned from watching this guy tear this thing apart is that corsair makes one hell of a durable cooler...
Well, Asetek does, then Corsair slaps one hell of a logo on it.
I'm late to the party but he's like a Neanderthal at work. Had he just taken the pins out, he wouldn't have had to cut anything.
7:47 Money Shot XD
Just about to take one apart and he saved me the agony! haha - Cheers to the man!
KASUALKILLAS 😳😳😳
Thanks, was looking to build a custom nexon fluid cooler, but it'll need thicker pipes, was curious how the flow is handled and now I know :)
Great video! Exactly the information I was looking for to attempt a repair on my 6yr old Corsair Cwch80. Thank you for the upload. Answered a ton of questions and will help enormously =) !
really informative video i have a h60 and it put my mind at rest watching this and how well its built :)
"It doesnt fuck around" lol, great vid. Good to see people are still taking stuff apart to learn how things work. People as in you, which gets my sub
This is actually pretty good stuff. The engineering on this is pretty brilliant.
Very informative. Thank you! I just bought one the other day, should be here tomorrow.
subbed and liked,really enjoyed this video even tho i didnt understand much of the part where you were talking about the electronic bits,resistors,leads and so on,but its nice to know how the pump works :)
Thanks for this, it gives me a very good indication why my CPU heat is sometimes as low as 29 Oc and then 48-55 Oc. The fan must stick, so now I take the side of the case off given the block a few light knocks and would you believe it, the temp drops to 29 Oc again. I guess that "gunk" I saw is a CPU killer?
Really great teardown by the way! Good work,
(anyway, it boils down to: heatpipes can achieve in the order of
this was rather intriguing, presumably
coolant fluid MUST enter the rotor on the center of it, other way it would be a turbine instead of a pump, so, fluid circulation must be the other way around, Low temperature fluid arrives to the cooper heat spreader on its periferia and run all the way to the core, passing through the fins and elevating it temperature in the process, (removing heat from the cpu) then it reaches the center and slips through the hole moving on to the center of the rotor, the the rotor impels it to its own periferia, rising fluids pressure and pumping it to the radiator, where it will cools down and continue to the intake of the water block to repeat the process.
LOL Oh god I laughed so hard when the liquid shot out of it onto the camera, that was awesome. Great video.
Nice video ! the disadvantage of 2 phase, needs momentum to spin
I have a couple of these, one is an H60 and the other an H80. The main issue I find is that this motor/impeller design is not as robust as older designs. It it gets off balance for any reason, it will vibrate a lot and make it almost unusable as far as noise is concerned. The H80 is silent and has been for years but I had to pull the H60 out of the PC I was using it on and replace it due to excessive noise and vibration. I'm still trying to see if I can fix it but haven't round what is wrong with it yet.
It appears that the blue material on the copper CPU plate may be RTV sealant. It is commonly used in industry as a backup sealant & to hold primary gaskets in place (the box shaped O-Ring) during assembly.
I'm not sure if anyone else commented on the 2 pin connection on the side of the Pump/Block, anyway I think it is to connect an early basic version of the LINK system to control fan speed automatically when temps increase . They advertised this and the H100/H1OOi as having LINK, but you had to spend about another £50 to get it separately.=(
7:47 LOL "Wear glasses when experimenting everyone"
That stuff could ruin your eyes, lots of chemicals go into the coolant for radiators.
lol "it's manufactured using metric"
sounds like a complaint :P
join the rest of the world if you haven't already
The Aviation and Aerospace industry is mostly Standard. I neither agree or disagree with your comment but just a FYI. "the rest of the world" doesn't necessarily use Metric.
sorry, not rest of the world, vast majority of the world is what I should have said.
I believe the automotive industry uses mostly Standard for things like power and pressure.
And then use metric for things like displacement.
Presumably I liked this video.
How old was this pump in the video? The gas is most likely hydrogen as a corrosion byproduct.
And just to clarify for the people asking, the anti-freeze is propylene glycol based.
Pre-filled with mountain dew for the real gamers
The fins are probably made by a process called skiving, where a blade makes very fine shavings in the substrate that are stood on end.
you killed it man!
Oil isn't mixed into the coolant, nor is there any antifreeze, the liquid stays quite warm considering it is in constant contact with a hot CPU, since there is a single 120mm radiator cooling performance is quite poor, the liquid is just distilled water
Ok those 2 pins are power pins coming from a molecular connector, the three pin PWM header is only to control pump speed
I know that.
On the other hand, I don't have any compunction about using a paper towel to wipe off the UV filter I have in front of the lens to protect it in just this sort of situation.
antifreeze isnt there to stop the liquid from freezing while under operation, its there to stop it freezing while its turned off, the cpu isnt there to warm it up if you turn the pc on in a cold room.
"It's all sticky" probably because it contains ethylene glycol. You'll probably want to clean that off your hands with more haste next time.
*laughs in mechanic*
how easy would it be to change the pipes on the closed loop water coolers? i have a msi gaming edition closed loop water cooler, but i would love to change the pipes so that they are see through!!
dat fin is probably pressed on, since copper is soft and its generally easier and cheap to form the shape rather than using an end mill
Cooper is soft until you work it, it then work hardens, Forming copper is difficult as copper is very abrasive and wears tooling out very quickly,
Hmmn was thinking about putting a bigger radiator on my h60, not so sure I want to after watching this video. I did that to an enermax 240 aio and expanded it to a 360 radiator, connected it to a reservoir, and works perfect. However, the enermax uses gaskets and isn't pressurized
nice vid
dont stop
There's actually a rather silly story there, for why I bought a 2600 over a 2600K.
Basically, I wanted to experiment with VT-d. The 2600 has VT-d enabled, whereas the 2600K does not.
So after all that, I wound up with a 2600. I then proceeded to buy a motherboard with a BIOS that doesn't support VT-d (it requires BIOS-level support to work properly).
Derp.
Oh well, it's not like there are many virtualization programs that support VT-d anyways.
I haven't used an EDM machine on copper but maybe that's how they got the fins.
22:58 You have it wrong it's not need mass etc. it's osculating because of coils are energised in sequence. The base is moving to finding neutral position between magnetic filed. Because base it's not attached to anything it's move instead of shaft. Check DC motors.
You can drain and refill by just removing the copper plate. :)
The idea is that you can decouple the heat-dissipating element (The radiator) from the heat-generating element (the CPU).
Basically, you're somewhat limited in maximum heat-sink size just by the fact that it has to mount to the motherboard.
-----
As an aside, water is an **excellent** thermal medium. Assuming proper circulation (e.g. a pump), it's WAY better then a heatpipe.
The term "Goof Ball" comes to mind. Wow
Just looked up skiving.
That's.... really cool!
It's possible (or at least it's my guess) that the fins were machined with a wire EDM machine. You can get really fine wires with those things.
How do i disconnect the damn hose from the radiator while being able to put them back like on the water pump assembly since i want an easier way to refill the liquid without air bubbles
damn that made me jump when the pressure released
same here haha
I think the audio is way off at 08:00 (and before probably). But a really nice cooler. I believe Corsair are a quality brand of computer parts, and that goes to show here. I wouldn't expect otherwise for such watercooling parts..
can the radiator be reused for custom water cooling?
what kind of coolant is that? anyways, many thanks for the video
nice video, saved me pulling one apart myself :D might be an idea to get yourself some nitrile gloves though man, those things cost next to nothing and its worth it when dealing with fluids and stuff, im sure most cooling fluid is safe but i still dont fancy getting random junk on my skin. take care man, good video.
whats the size of the tubes to be used?
Your PC sounds like a vacuum cleaner... "Im running stock" xD
Does this require maintenance and is it refillable? Is it also the same as H75?
destroyed an absolutelly repairable AIO
To cut the fins they probably use a wire edm machine. I work with those machines and we've cut stuff like that
+cheeriomartinez Yep I agree that's the only way I can think of that they can do that, those machines are very very expensive
OR!! I just thought of this... maybe molding?
cheeriomartinez I've never seen something that intricate being molded like that but who knows
sorry but fins like this are impossible to mold. The liquid coppe solidifies way to fast for fins like this.
You can mill this fins but the most common way is spark eroding.
i luuuve the "ekh" sounds you making :p
Is that corsair H60 water need to be replaced?
Woow, so the problem with these is the corrosion of the copper in the thin stripes where the coolant makes contact. In the end the flow decreases drastically cause of this.
My guess is those fins aren't cut the cooling plate looks pressed
Did you measure the size of the pump?
Hey! i've seen your vid a few times and decided to ask for some help. i have an H60, and my pump is acting up, i took it apart and when i connect it to the power the pump will make a few strange sounds, once you manually turn it though, itll start spinning and even if you stop it, it'll restart. what could the problem be? i can't really use it if i have to start the pump manually.... what do?
I wonder: why would you ever use water cooling? The only function it seems to serve is to increase the thermal impedance from the CPU heatspreader to air... I mean, heatpipes are much better than convection by water, like an order of magnitude.
I have the same cooler and i wanted to ask if there is a way to fix it somehow, it has something to do with that small orange thermal meter you said in the end of the video.
is there a way to fix it ?
That's why I have a cheap UV filter on the lens.
Awesome video man, keep it up!
Huh. Well, all I know is that water-cooling has been a domain of crazy PC overclockers for more then a decade now. And indeed there is a *lot* of discussion on the most effective way to thermally couple the water to the heat-source.
As for the radiator size, well all I can say is that Corsair makes multiple models with the same waterblock, but different radiator sizes (H60 H80 H100), and the H60 is indeed the smallest. It still gets decent reviews, and is better then most stock heatsinks, tho
Extreme Teardown: Corsair H60 open-loop water-cooler
omg the sound of the radiator flopping around ....
i have the next generation of this, the cooling performance is rather poor for its noiselevel, way worse then my ARCTIC Freezer XTREME Rev. 2, which was actually less then half the price of the H60...
Do you guys think it would hurt if i carefully screw of the baseplate and look for any debree in the fins? i mean, the pressure that is in there would escape, otherwise i should be able to put it together as it was...
do you think the pressure does actually have a valid reason to be there and is needed for cooling, or is it just something that builds up with time and can be released no problem?
Cheap (
***** Well, look at H80i.
interesting, id love to see how to fill it up without using a reservoir
I dunno about that, My i7-2600 has been running fine on the stock heatsink for more then a year.
I don't overclock, though.
Really, it's just a matter of what you want to do. I don't particularly feel the need to overclock, and I don't have noise problems (my GPU is much, MUCH louderO.
Its popular becsue all these coolers gunk up and dry out, and need refilloing and flushing after a few years.
so in the end your cooling capacity gets limited by the size and efficiency of the airflow through the radiator, not the stuff carrying the heat from cpu to radiator...
2600 is fine its not an overclocking chip so your right by sticking with the stock cooler
That is the h80 not the h60 :) and also I dont think that is a beeper for the pump its a water inlet so you can bleed the air out as someone replaced the tubes on one with clear and added red dye and used that to add the dye and remaining water.
that is definetly the h60. H80 ahs a thicer rad
lazer cut?
Mine stopped cooling in 8 months. I put distilled water in it and now it’s only as good as a air cooler
is any part of this thing reusable?
ok sir
7:48 thank you !!!
cmn focus? seriusly?
thumbs up if you jumped when he pulled the hose and sprayed the camera lol
But what use is using a closed-loop system with such a small, high impedance radiator then :P doesnt make sense
As for water as a thermal medium: no... it's pretty bad compared to heatpipes, but the reasons are quite a bit more complex. It mostly boils down to the fact that water is a very bad conductor *but* a very good storing medium of heat, so you need high surface area and/or mass flow rate to get similar performance. I should write this up somewhere other than YT comments...
awesome video buddy! i'm always wondering what's inside of this thing and you just made it happen :-)
Just so you know never use a paper towel on a camera lens, it is likely to damage the lens.
Have just mounted it onto new i5.
not overclocking is like throwing processing performance away, most modern motherboards have a decent amount of overclockability and even if you dont have a K series processor you still have the ability to overclock, the problem with stock coolers are both their cooling ability and noise... youre basically throwing money away... even an H60 is way better than stock