The Corsair Hydro X Custom Water Cooling Review, on a Ryzen 9 3950X
by Gavin Bonshor on February 5, 2020 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
To test the performance of Corsair Hydro X, we compared two setups which we replicated the best we could with the hardware available. The Corsair Hydro X series single 240 mm radiator loop was tested with our ASRock X570 Aqua motherboard, while we used the ID-Cooling Auraflow 240 mm AIO on the similar spec ASRock X570 Creator for comparison. We used the exact same hardware across both systems including the same OS build, and same firmware settings. As the ASRock X570 Aqua and ASRock X570 Creator are nearly identical.
The Corsair Hydro X installed on our Openbench Table for performance testing
For our stock settings, we ran with default settings with the XMP 2.0 on our Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200 CL18 memory kit enabled. Our overclocking settings include XMP 2.0 enabled on our memory, with a CPU VCore of 1.35 V and an all-core frequency of 4.3 GHz.
| Corsair Hydro X System Test Setup | |||
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 3950X, 105W, $329 16 Cores, 32 Threads, 3.5 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) |
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| Motherboard | ASRock X570 Aqua (BIOS 1.40 - ABBA) - Corsair Hydro X ASRock X570 Creator (BIOS 1.70 - ABBA) - ID-Cooling Auraflow |
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| Stock Settings | AMD Ryzen 3950X, Default Settings, PBO Enabled | ||
| Overclock Settings | AMD Ryzen 3950X, 4.3 GHz All-Core, 1.35 V CPU VCore | ||
| Cooling | Corsair Hydro X Series: Corsair XD5 Pump/Reservoir Corsair XR7 240 mm radiator Corsair Softline 10/13 mm fittings Corsair Softline 10/13 mm tubing Corsair XL5 clear coolant Corsair LL120 RGB 120 mm fans Corsair Commander Pro RGB hub ID-Cooling Auraflow 240mm AIO (as base comparison) |
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| Power Supply | Corsair HX 850 850 Watt Platinum | ||
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3200 CL18-19-19-39 1T |
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| Video Card | ASRock RX 5700 XT Taichi X 8G OC+ (1810/2025 Boost) | ||
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
| Case | Corsair Cyrstal Series 680X | ||
| Operating System | Windows 10 1909 | ||
Thermal Performance
The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X is a 16-core 32-thread processor designed for the X570 desktop platform. With larger core counts typically comes more heat and as standard, the 3950X has a TDP of 105 W. While this is great, TDP doesn't play out as intended once motherboard vendors implement its tweaks to maximise performance. To keep the Ryzen 9 3950X cool, AMD recommends liquid cooling as standard from its marketing.
For the temperature testing, we took delta temperatures at idle and maximum load. For our load results, we ran the Prime95 to stress our AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor and took the value after 30 minutes. Our ambient office temperature at idle was 21°C and at load, it was 22°C during testing.
At idle, the differences aren't that major at both default settings and overclocked at 4.3 GHz. The Corsair Hydro X has the benefit of running slightly cooler with 1.35 V applied on the CPU VCore.
Running an AMD Ryzen 3950X at full load with Prime95 for 30 minutes, and we start to see the gap open up between the Corsair Hydro X series custom loop and the ID-Cooling Auraflow 240 mm CLC. Although the gap at default settings between both solutions at stock is 3°C, and at load, just 5°C, the radiator size of both options is the same. Another variable to consider is that the Corsair Hydro X Series in our testing isn't just cooling the processor, but the power delivery and chipset of the ASRock X570 Aqua. This will naturally increase temperatures as more components are being cooled, but not by a drastic amount.
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supdawgwtfd - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
Wanted. Native English speaker to read articles before posting...Seriously.... The absolutely terrible English in this a review is... Well. Terrible.
Spelling mistakes. Repeating words. Disjointed sentences.
Hire a fucking editor.
supdawgwtfd - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
Wanted. Native English speaker to read articles before posting...Seriously.... The absolutely terrible English in this a review is... Well. Terrible.
Spelling mistakes. Repeating words. Disjointed sentences.
Hire a fucking editor.
PeachNCream - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
They do correct typos and errors (sometimes) if you point them out in specific, but that depends on whether or not someone, either the writer or Ryan, skims through the comments.Yes, they need to do a lot better. It does say a lot that some of these glaring issues are actually published and some elbow grease is certainly warranted to make improvements on writing quality that has declined in recent years. I'd still give them a pass because coherent writing and skillful editing are dying arts thanks in no small part to autocorrection features and squggly red and green lines we now find in word processors.
Targon - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
Why would you use DDR4-3200CL18 RAM on ANY system? CL16 is bad enough, but CL18?Ratman6161 - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
In "any system"? The answer is easy: To save money. But I agree that if you are buying a $700+ CPU and putting it on a $1000 motherboard and adding an $800+ cooling system, then skimping on the RAM would be foolish.For purposes of the test though, it doesn't matter since they were testing cooling performance.
Ratman6161 - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
OK, so I'm not so in to the custom loop thing. For me, this story confirms that I've made a good choice there. Here's why?The ID Cooling AIO they use as a comparison is a relatively low end unit. I couldn't find a price on it but I did find a review that said it wasn't as good as other similar AIO units and specifically cited the Corsair H100i as being superior. The H100i is $157 on Amazon.
In spite of the relative crapiness of the ID cooling product, in the test it kept the overclocked 3950X down to 60C under load. That seems to me to be a darned good result. My overclocked 1700 peaks at about 65C under load using an H55 with push-pull fans and I consider that plenty good enough.
So other than the cool/appearance factor, what is really to be gained from the custom loop given that I don't care about GPU cooling - Just CPU?
What I was hoping to see was if they were able to get any more performance as a result of the lower temperatures. For example, at stock setting will the CPU boost higher or for longer or on more cores? Can you get a higher overclock out of it?
Tomatotech - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
By using this, you gain a splatter of unicorn vomit all over your bedroom and a guarantee that you will never be crowded in your bed.Daveteauk - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
WHAT?! You don't use Corsairs water blocks when you're doing a review of CORSAIRs water cooling system?! What a waste of everyone's time! That's the point I stopped reading! You should NOT have used that MoBo.Daveteauk - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
Why has someone removed my post which was complaining about your testing methods?! How can u do a test of CORSAIRs water cooling system and then NOT USE their accociated water blocks?!? = Total waste of everyone's time.Korguz - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
what are you talking about ?? your comment is still there