Corsair A70 Heatsink Review

After reviewing the H50 and H70 low cost liquid cooling solutions that Corsair is selling, I became curious about how well their other cooling solutions perform. Besides the above mentioned units, Corsair is also selling the A50 and A70 tower style heat sinks. The A50 seems to be budgeted at the lower end of the premium cooling scene and the A70 looks like it is being marketed more at the high end scene, in competition with the likes of Thermalright, Prolimatech and Noctua. Since Corsair didn’t bother sending either one of these for review, I got kind of curious to see if they were trying to hide behind the performance of their H50 and H70 solutions and went ahead and bought an A70 to review and see if it works well or if Corsair has something to hide with their conventional heat sink offerings.

Specifications (Courtesy Corsair)

Features

  • Compatible with Intel and AMD systems
  • Four 8 mm copper direct-contact heatpipes
  • Aluminum fins
  • Low-noise, low-vibration 120 mm fans mounted on rubber studs
  • Selectable 1,600 or 2,000 RPM allows you to select the cooling performance you want
  • Two-year warranty

Specifications

  • Model CAFCA70
  • Heatsink dimensions 159.5 mm x 124.6 mm x 129 mm
  • Fan Dimensions 120 mm x 25 mm
  • Fan speed Selectable 1,600 or 2,000 RPM
  • Air flow 50 – 61 CFM
  • Static pressure 1.8 – 2.3 mm H2O
  • Noise level 26 – 31.5 dBA

Compatibility

Includes mounting brackets for Intel LGA775, Intel LGA1366, Intel LGA 1156, AMD socket AM2 and AMD socket AM3 motherboards.

The fan/cooling fin structure is elevated 43 mm (1.69”) from the motherboard. Some motherboards outfitted with six pieces (6 GB or 12 GB) of RAM with tall heat spreaders, such as Corsair Dominator and Dominator GT, may not provide enough clearance between the CPU and the closest memory slot. Motherboards with standard height memory do not present a potential compatibility issue.

Packaging

The box the H70 comes in is sized at 262 mm X 210 mm X 132 mm. The box is sturdily constructed and uses foam extensively around the heat sink itself. The mounting hardware comes inside a separate cardboard box inside the shipping box, as do the fan/mount assemblies. All in all, a very secure shipping solution. Below are some pictures of the box and heat sink.

Front of box
Front of box

Back of box
Back of box

Right side of box
Right side of box

Left side of box
Left side of box

Opening box
Opening box

All components of box showing.
All components of box showing.

Front view of Heat sink.
Rear view of Heat sink.

Side view of Heat sink.
Side view of Heat sink.
Base of Heat sink. Pretty flat and even for an HDT design.
Base of Heat sink. Pretty flat and even for an HDT design.

The heat sink itself has a mass of 693.5 grams with the Intel “H” mounting plate installed on the heat sink, as measured on an Ohaus 2610 triple beam balance. The base is of the direct touch heatpipe style, with 4 heatpipes being evenly distributed across the bottom of the mounting base. Checking with my metal ruler, the base is about as flat as you can make an HDT style base. Also included with this heat sink is a very brief Quick Installation booklet; more on that later. The fan/mount assemblies included with this heat sink have a mass of 134.7 grams and clip onto the end of the heat sink itself. When I first looked at the mounts I thought they would be flimsy, but in use I found them to hold securely, even with much heavier fans installed on them.

Installation

The included Quick Install guide is pretty bad, as far as installing on Intel systems go. Corsair doesn’t help matters on their website either, as you have to look in their forums to even find a link to the .pdf file on installing this heat sink. This still doesn’t cover a few parts on the mounting hardware included with the kit either. For AMD systems, the mount is much simpler since it uses the stock AMD retention module and with the way it clamps the heat sink, this can be used with the older AMD Athlon64 and Opteron sockets such as socket 939 and even socket 754 systems.

For mounting on Intel LGA 1366 and LGA 775 systems (and LGA 1156 too, though I don’t own one), I found the following to be the best method for mounting. For either LGA 1366 and LGA 1156, which both come with a back plate under the socket, there are 4 black plastic washers included with the mounting hardware that need to go on the four mounting posts before pushing them through the holes on the motherboard. They act as spacers to compensate for the thickness of the Intel mandated backplate under the motherboard and keep the mounting posts from bending the Corsair backplate when the heat sink is mounted. For LGA775 systems, which don’t have the Intel-mandated back plate under the socket, the 4 black plastic spacers are not needed to correctly mount the heat sink. After testing this heat sink on my test system, I mounted this heat sink on a LGA775 system to verify this information. Also, a bit different with the more normal Intel mounts used with other premium heat sinks, this one has an “H” bracket that screws to the base and it also doesn’t use springs, but rather depends on the torsion of the “H” bracket for tension.

Once I figured out the correct mounting procedure, it made for a very secure and repeatable mount, with little variation in temps between mounts. One other point I want to bring up that is incorrect on Corsair’s mounting guide for both AMD and Intel is the way they suggest to apply the TIM. Their guide shows using the “pea sized drop in the middle of the IHS” method, which doesn’t work well with HDT type heatsinks. Rather, I applied a thin line down each heatpipe instead, which gave me better temps. I compared the two methods of application and found the pea sized application in the middle of the IHS to give 4 °C worse temps as compared to the line method. Also, on the two outer heatpipes, put the line of TIM to the inside of those two heatpipes as those don’t sit all the way on the IHS on my LGA1366 processor. One final note about installation: this heat sink is asymmetrical in design and has a definite front and a back side to it. The bowed side needs to face the ram slots as it gives more clearance between the fan and the ram slots.

Mounting hardware included with the Heat sink.
Mounting hardware included with the Heat sink.

Intel mounting base and the four black plastic spacers not covered in the install guide.
Intel mounting base and the four black plastic spacers not covered in the install guide.

Intel base with plastic washers installed. I found this helps stabilize the base on the LGA1366 platform.
Intel base with plastic washers installed. I found this helps stabilize the base on the LGA1366 platform.

Intel mounting base installed on Heat sink.
Intel mounting base installed on Heat sink.

It's hard to reach the mounting screws on the exhaust die of the sink because of the overhang of the fins.
It's hard to reach the mounting screws on the exhaust side of the sink because of the overhang of the fins.

Intake side of sink. This side goes toward the ram to give more clearance.
Intake side of sink. This side goes toward the ram to give more clearance.
Exhaust side of sink. This side faces the case exhaust fans.
Exhaust side of sink. This side faces the case exhaust fans.

Test Setup

Fans used for testing were as follows:

Fan(s)Size (mm)RPMCFMdBAH2O Static

Pressure

WattageMass (g)
2x Stock Corsair A70 fans120 x 251600

2000

50

61

26

31.5

0.0709″

0.0906″

2.16116.5
2x Scythe S-FlexSFF21F120 x 25160063.728N/A2.4178
2x ScytheSFF21G120 x 2519007535N/A2.88182
2x NMB-Mat (Panaflo)

FBA12G12L-1BX

120 x 38170068.9300.13″2.88255
2x Sanyo Denki San Ace

109R1212H1011

120 x 382600102.4390.26″6.24243
2x Delta

FFB1212VHE

120 x 383200151.85530.445″12403
1x Sanyo Denki San Ace

9CR1212P0G03

120 x 766200/2700

(compound)

300701.93″86.4753

I’ve added the Delta fans to my testing since I got them at a good price and represent a more moderate cost cooling solution in the extreme realm than the Sanyo Denki compound fan. The noise from a pair of these is much more tolerable than the Sanyo Denki, with not nearly as much motor whine from them. They are not quiet by any means, but the noise from them is more flow noise than motor whine and blade pop like the Denki.

Installed with the stock fans.
Installed with the stock fans.

Installed with The Beast.
Installed with The Beast.

Even with the offset built into the heat sink, there are still clearance issues with ram slots and tall heatspreaders.
Even with the offset built into the heat sink, there are still clearance issues with ram slots and tall heatspreaders.

Installed with the stock fans.
Installed with 38 mm thick fans.

The testbed system consists of the following components:

  • Case – Chieftech clone of the Antec 1040 case series, with the original 80 mm exhaust fans being removed and the holes enlarged to mount two 92 mm fans externally on the outside of the rear case bulkhead instead of internally.
  • Motherboard – Asus P6T
  • Processor – Intel Core i7 Extreme 980X, overclocked to 4000 MHz @ 1.304 v.
  • RAM – Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600
  • Video Card – eVGA 7900GTX
  • Power Supply – HEC Cougar series (German HEC, not US model) S700
  • Hard Drive – Western Digital Caviar 250 GB SATA hard drive
  • Optical Drive – Lite On DVD-RW drive
  • OS – Windows Vista Ultimate 64 Service Pack 2
  • Arctic Cooling MX2 thermal paste was used for testing as I have found it to give good consistent results with no appreciable break in and it applies and cleans up easily.

Test Methodology and Results

The testing methodology used is the same as I used with my previous reviews. All energy saving features of the motherboard and processor were turned off to keep it from down clocking the processor speed and vcore. All fan control functions were turned off in bios to keep the fans at maximum speed. For processor temperature monitoring purposes, I am using Real Temp 3.40, with logging enabled at 2 second intervals.

Temps in my computer room were maintained between 20.5 to 21.1 °C (69-70 °F), measured at the front of the case. If room temperatures exceeded these parameters I re-ran that individual test run.

For loading the CPU, I used Prime95 version 25.8 using in-place large FFT’s and ran it for 30 minutes to stabilize temps. After 30 minutes, I would exit Prime95 and let the CPU idle for at least 10 minutes. The highest recorded temperature from the hottest core for each run was then recorded off of the Real Temp log, the lowest temperature on any core was recorded and the average temperature on the hottest core was calculated during the load portion of each run.

Each fan configuration was tested with three remounts of the heat sink, and the lowest average temperature run recorded, to minimize any problems between mount to mount installations. When testing in the extreme performance realm with the SanAce 9CR1212P0G03, it was installed in a push configuration, just like my tests with it on the other premium heat sinks I’ve tested.

This first chart gives the results with the various fan combinations I tested:

The first thing I noticed is that this design doesn’t scale well with higher CFM and static pressure fans. It really didn’t start showing a noticeable gain in performance until the extreme performance fans were installed on the heat sink. The 120 X 38 mm Panaflo L1BX fan actually performed worse than the stock fans from Corsair, which was a big surprise to me too. Most people won’t want to live with the noise of a pair of focused flow Delta fans or that Sanyo Denki Beast fan for everyday usage, so Corsair did a good job of choosing the fans for this heatsink that maximize cooling without getting too noisy. For comparing the performance of the A70 to other heat sinks that come as an out-of-the-box cooling solution I have tested, we have the following table to look at.

Conclusion

As you can see, the performance of the A70 is in the ballpark with other high end cooling options. It matches the True Spirit and beats the H50 in cooling, but lags behind the rest by a little. All in all, a pretty good showing for a heat sink that is nowhere near the top in the cost column. The A70 does have a few drawbacks, in that it will not play well with RAM that uses tall heatspreaders and its design will pretty much cover the first RAM slot on most motherboards. Their installation directions leave much to be desired. It also has several items in the plus column, in that it performs well as delivered and the Intel mounting system holds very securely and isn’t too hard to put on inside the case. The A70 is a good performing heat sink and is worthy of consideration when you are deciding on your next cooling solution to buy. As such, I give this heat sink the Overclockers Approved award.

muddocktor

About Jim Gautreaux 25 Articles
I work in the oil drilling industry, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. I got into building and overclocking computers in the 90's and haven't looked back since.

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Avatar of m0r7if3r
m0r7if3r

Member, Water Cooling Sticky Reading Enforcement O

8,986 messages 0 likes

Nice writeup! Good read! Glad to see the testing database growing

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Fennecfox

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Max rpm constantly

I have a friend who got this heat sink, he has a problem though. It is always at max rpm. He is running window 7, apparently there is something he needs to buy, is there anyway you guys can help me help him perhaps? I would buy the heat sink as long as that max rpm is actually not an issue. Thanks everyone :cool:

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Avatar of m0r7if3r
m0r7if3r

Member, Water Cooling Sticky Reading Enforcement O

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you just need a fan controller or inline resistor and you're set :thup:

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muddocktor

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Your friend should have had 2 inline resistor connectors come with his heatsink. Just plug the fan into the resistor connector and then plug that into the fan header on the mobo. The resistor connector looks something like a wire extender.

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Avatar of I.M.O.G.
I.M.O.G.

Glorious Leader

25,037 messages 3 likes

Nice testing Jim, enjoyed the write up and interesting to see the performance numbers land where they do in comparison to the price. Right now, its $48 at newegg, $38 after MIR, plus a few bucks for shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181011

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muddocktor

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Thank you, Matt. Yes, that's what I paid for it when I bought it for testing. And I bought it from Newegg too. A pretty nice heatsink for the price. And while I didn't test it, the AMD mounting system looks to be pretty good too. I like the fact that they use the stock AMD RM, which means an easy and quick cooling upgrade without having to remove the mobo for the AMD guys.:thup:

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Avatar of Omsion
Omsion

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Nice review - do you have the numbers saved from each run out of the three as well?

Seeing all the underlying data is always nice :p

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Avatar of David
David

Forums Super Moderator

15,810 messages 10 likes

I've just put one of these on my APU - the AMD mounting is quite straightforward, and I have gone from ~65C under 100% load to ~33 C under 100% load (stock cooler, A70, respectively).

However, because of the way the lugs face on my Biostar A75MH, the fans point up the way. This isn't an issue for me, because I have two 120 mm fans in the top of the case anyway, but might be a bit of a pain for people who don't, unless of course the PSU has a fan on the bottom.

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neonblingbling

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Old thread, but wanted to say thanks for the write-up. Corsair really needs to fix that quick-start manual. I had no clue what to do with the rubber washers, and totally screwed up my temps when I did the 'pea in center' method. Re-applying the TIM directly on the heatpipes reduced my IBT temps by 5C.

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