Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX XT Liquid CPU Cooler - Three AF120 RGB ELITE Fans - 360mm Radiator - Intel® LGA 1700, 1200, 115X, 2066, AMD® AM5, AM4 - Included iCUE COMMANDER CORE - Black

Product Information

Processors have become far more powerful over recent years with more cores and better efficiencies throughout the manufacturing process. Still, AMD and Intel are in a constant struggle against heat output in the attempt to extract as much performance from internal components as possible. This is where AIO liquid coolers come into play. Instead of fans connecting directly to the pump, we now get an iCUE Commander Core, which not only offers fan and pump speed control but also RGB control for both the pump as well as the eight RGB LEDs in each of the ML120 Series fans that ship in the box. Corsair claims extreme performance, a Zero RPM mode, split flow copper cold plate, a low-noise centrifugal pump, various sized radiators in the series, and is easy to install.

Everyone seems to be making all-in-one liquid CPU coolers, and Corsair has been in the business for many years now. Most AIO solutions make use of Asetek's pump and AIO design, including the Corsair H150i Elite Capellix. It's almost identical to the Corsair H150i Elite LCD, aside from a few notable differences (namely that display).The Corsair iCUE Commander Core XT Smart RGB controller is brilliant for hooking up all your fans and RGB lighting with up to six channels for each. For RGB LEDs on the AIO itself, you'll find some on the pump housing and included fans. The former can even be upgraded with an optional LCD kit. The average thermal resistance of 0.0704 °C/W is impressive but users need to keep in mind that this performance comes with the fans rotating at their maximum speed. With the powerful fans of the H150i Elite Capellix, this results to a sound pressure level of 43 dB(A), a relatively high figure for a CPU cooler.

Support for the iCUE H150i Elite Capellix covers all of the current processors! AM4, sTR4, and sTRX4 are supported out of the box for AMD, while on the Intel side, there are 115X, 1200, and 2011(V3)/2066 support. The last bit in the chart covers the five-year warranty. When it comes to thermal resistance, Corsair’s latest AIO cooler initially seems to be slightly outperforming all of the 360 mm coolers that we have tested to this date. The average thermal resistance of 0.0808 °C/W is almost identical to the figures we received from the recently released NZXT X73, with Corsair’s MagLev fans giving the H150i Elite Capellix a small advantage in terms of acoustics. Install the 4 Intel standoff screws into your motherboard. Make sure all 4 screws are tightened until secure. Also, setting to a decibel 'value' also isn't entirely accurate and can leave a larger range for operational limits. Example, there might actually be a variation of +/-300 RPM where the measurable difference of a single decibel is seen, but 300 RPM is actually a significant difference in the amount of airflow being moved. 1200 RPM and 1500 RPM actually end up performing quite differently. It becomes difficult to replicate test runs without variables based on decibel levels alone as the same measurement of 35dB for one test can easily fall outside of acceptable deviation. Once your cooler is installed to your motherboard, it is time to connect the fans and pump to the iCUE Commander CORE.Corsair supplies a Commander CORE module alongside with the H150i Elite Capellix, which essentially is a version of the iCUE Commander Pro RGB controller that the company retails as a stand-alone product, simply tailored to control the RGB lighting of the liquid cooler instead. Nevertheless, it sports six fan power and RGB LED connectors, allowing users to install up to three additional compatible fans, enabling either push-pull configurations or the control of system fans. Both AIOs use the same generation of Asetek pump, which is more than capable of handling the heat output of an AMD Ryzen Threadripper or Intel Core i9 processor, especially when paired with a massive 360mm radiator. A major difference here is the type of fans used. The Elite Capellix comes with three ML RGB series blowers, while the more expensive Elite LCD has ML ELITE fans. NOTE: Your cooler pump head should have thermal paste already applied. If you want to use your own thermal paste, make sure you thoroughly clean the cold plate of the pump head and the integrated heat spreader (IHS) of your processor with isopropyl alcohol and lint-free cloth. Corsair is one of the oldest and most reputable PC component manufacturers in the PC market. The company’s origins lie with memory-related products but, nearly two decades ago, the company slowly began diversifying into other segments of the market. While their initial attempts were reluctant, releasing but a couple of products each time, most of these attempts were highly successful and drove the company to grow massively into the entrepreneurial (and recently IPOed) giant that they are today.

This is great in concept, except that the reality is that not every cooler manages to reach the same dB level at peak operation or lowest noise levels as every other cooler. Some coolers are not seen to operate at 35 or 40dB while others easily exceed it. These same coolers in comparison also To make it even better, the depth of control and all of the options at hand using iCUE is astounding. What makes it a step above is the inclusion of motherboard and GPU lighting control! Anything RGB can be controlled with iCUE, so you no longer have to mess with multiple software suites, and there is the fact that the flow of colors in certain modes is synced so much better than was possible for us before Corsair stepped up their game!Manually applying all of the power possible to the fans for this test, we found them to top out at 2380 RPM, which falls into the 2400 RPM max that the specifications mentioned. At this time, we take on another level of noise production, where the meter showed us 70 dB of noise coming from the exhaust side of the radiator, at a foot away! Final Thoughts

In setting fan speeds, this is much simpler as we can define the PWM control of the fan to be exactly 100% or exactly 50%, which is a precise measurement of the fan RPM with very minimal average fluctuation over time. The Corsair H150i Elite Capellix seems to be getting the best thermal performance out of every similarly sized AIO cooler that we have tested to this date, outperforming NZXT’s X73 by a whisker. The performance seems to be fairly stable across most of the load range, offering predictable performance regarding of the load, with the exception of very low loads where the temperature difference is far too small for appropriate heat transfer between the mediums. The specifications we have were taken from the reviewer's guide, and it covers most of what you will need to know. We are now dealing with the CW-9060048-WW as the model number to the iCUE H150i Elite Capellix cooler, which boasts of low noise emanating from the pump, where Corsair says it is less than 20 dB(A), measured from a meter away. As Corsair calls it, the pump harness is to take software settings and apply it to the three PWM fans included in the box.

Outperform The Competition

Many of the previous solutions from Corsair to hit our lab for testing have floundered in thermal results, leaving us with little choice but to remove points from the awards with a heavy hand. However, with what we have seen with the H150i Elite Capellix, with chart-topping results in extreme mode, and top-five finishes in balanced mode, sways our perspective of what to expect when it comes to the new Corsair sealed AIOs! So much comes in the box, which you are left wanting nothing when it is all installed and ready to run! Using a PWM voltage regulator, we reduced the speed of the fans manually down to half their rated speed. At this setting, the 120 mm MagLev fans of the H150i Elite Capellix rotate at 1220 RPM. Since the pump’s speed cannot be controlled directly, we had the Commander CORE module attached to a PC and set the pump to operate in its “Quiet” mode while testing.