Design and Functionality
In fact, the design of Corsair H80 doesn’t differ too greatly from the flagship H100 system. It is a compact liquid-cooling system where a water block is combined into a single unit with a pump and is connected to the radiator with tubes:
There is only one key difference – the radiator:
It is 152x120x45 mm big compared with 275x120x25 mm by H100. In other words, Corsair engineers simply replaced a long and thin aluminum radiator with a short and thick one, having retained the same effective surface size.
At the same time the design of the radiator didn’t change at all. It consists of 12 thin heatpipes filled with coolant and aluminum band creating a comb-like structure:
The actual “working” part of the radiator is 38 mm thick, which is 20 mm more than by H100 (18 mm). This allows us to assume that the radiator fins are a little larger by H80 model than they are by H100. Everything else is the same.
The water block and pump unit has minimal differences from the same unit on the Corsair H100. It has two four-pin connectors for additional power, instead of four connectors on the H100:
The rest of the features and the Corsair Link connector are again exactly the same.
Although our particular unit the top decorative cover and the soft pad underneath it were detached from the pump for some reason:
The copper base surface has a layer of viscous gray thermal paste:
A thin layer of evenly applied thermal paste combined with exceptionally even surface of the water block base produced the following imprints on our LGA1366 processor:
The system compatibility and installation are exactly the same as with Corsair H100. The only difference is that Corsair H80 will require only one spot for a 120 mm fan inside your system case. This way, we can conclude that Corsair H80 is more universal than H100 after all. This is what it is going to look like inside the system case:
I would like to remind you that Corsair H80 comes already filled with coolant and sealed, which should allow you to use it problem-free for up to 5 years, according to the manufacturer. H80 comes with the same exact fans as H100, with the same exact rotation speed adjustment system, so we won’t dwell on these details here again.