Well I recieved my Corsair H5O today. First impressions are that it seems reasonably well built, its compact, quiet although I've got a question about the pump - more on that a bit further down. The tubes are a bit stiff although you can flex them a certain amount. Installation was reasonably straight forward although there were a few fiddly moments. Right on to the comparison tests. For the tests, I used the Prime95 Blend test for 1 hour. I was initially using a Prolimatech Megahalems in push pull with 2 Noctua P12's running at around 900rpm, and MX-2 for thermal paste. Case is a Silverstone Fortress. Test was run in the morning with an ambient temp of 19.5c
Prolimatech Megahalem
Max temps were 53-48-47-47.
The Corsair H5O was set up in push pull with 2 Noctua P12's running around 900rpm but were exhausting out of the case rather than as intakes as Corsair advise. The pre-applied paste was cleaned off of the pump/cold-plate and MX-2 was used again for thermal paste. Ambient temp was 20.5c at the time of the test.
Corsair H5O
Max temps were 56-52-52-52.
So by going off of the temps, in my situation the Corsair H5O was worse than the Prolimatech. Now I don't know whether that's down to the ambient being higher, a poor mount as it was a little fiddly attaching the pump to the bracket or whether the Corsair really does need the fans in an intake position to perform well.
Now on to the pump. Does anyone else who has the Corsair find that the pump makes a quiet buzzing type sound? It almost sounds like the buzz you get from a transformer. I'm not sure whether this is normal or not as I thought the pump was meant to be 'silent'? Oddly, it seems to almost disappear as the pump assembly warms up.