NVIDIA has unleashed a Titan among us mortals. The new NVIDIA GTX Titan GPU offers amazing graphics processing power while consuming up to 250w of power. The stock cooling setup on these cards looks pretty impressive but of course, there are always people out there that are not content with stock.

Recently, I stumbled across a system build thread over at the EVGA forums. Member "dustingg" has taken two Hydro Series H50 CPU coolers and with some slight tubing modifications, he's attained cooling results rivaling much more expensive custom cooling solutions. We applaud dustingg for his ingenuity and we also really like his choice of PSUs.

 

Judging by the title of this blog you might think that I’m about to discuss the Corsair Cooling™ Hydro Series H50 High Performance CPU cooler, since "big cooling in a small package" is a very accurate description of this mighty little cooler. And you’d almost be correct, because while this post does revolve around the Hydro Series H50, it more accurately concerns a very cool implementation of this product that will appeal to LAN gamers and lovers of miniature PCs in general. I’m talking about a quad-core, DirectX 10.1-powered Mini-ITX LAN gaming box, no larger than an average shoebox, liquid-cooled using the Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50.

Introduction

Corsair launched the Hydro Series H50 high-performance CPU cooler in June 2009, and since then it has taken the cooling market by storm. It has won worldwide critical acclaim for its superior cooling performance, quiet operation, and ease of use. Installing a Corsair H50 in place of your existing CPU cooler will significantly reduce CPU temperatures and allow for higher overclocking flexibility, and will provide better cooling at lower noise levels. But, as good as the H50 is out-of-the-box, it is possible to increase its performance even further with a simple fan upgrade known as ‘Push-Pull’, which uses two identical fans to increase airflow. We will compare the cooling performance of the H50 in single-fan and push-pull mode to that of a Noctua NH-U12P HSF, also in single- and dual-fan configurations. The test system will use an Intel Core i7-870 (Lynnfield) processor at stock settings, overclocked to 4133MHz with Hyper-Threading Off (max frequency) and overclocked to 4GHz with Hyper-Threading On (max multi-threaded performance). The results, summarized below, show that the Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50 in a push-pull configuration outperforms the standard H50 by up to 4^oC in the overclocking tests. In addition, it significantly outperforms the Noctua NH-U12P, with temperature reductions of up to 12^oC. This is a significant reduction that will increase overclocking headroom, as well as allowing for minimal noise levels while maintaining low CPU temperatures.