My Latest Toy

As some of you may know, I'm running STOCK Core i7 940. I may be the only person you know that's running a stock i7 of any sort. The major reason why I've been running a stock i7 is because I've yet to acquire an aftermarket heatsink. After much deliberation, I've finally taken the first steps to overclocking and gotten . Behold, the Corsair Hydro Series H50, a factory sealed CPU water cooler.


I was considering the Swiftech H20-220 Ultima water cooling kit at one point but I realized that, with my clumsiness, it would only be a matter of time before the externally mounted radiator would come loose. That, and the fact that it costs more than 4 times as much as the H50 with the chipset block. One downside is that I'm relegated to a noisy 40mm fan to cool my chipset since I've yet to find one that provides good airflow while remaining quiet.

Despite the H50 being my first ever aftermarket heatsink, I was able to install this thing with no problems.

Backplate installation was straightforward and simple. I originally forgot the metal screw guides and eyeballed the placement of the backplate. After I corrected my mistake, there was no guesswork at all. *facepalm* (note to self: always go through all the parts and instructions first)

Notice the dried up thermal paste on the processor in the next shot. :P

Since you rarely take out the motherboard, I thought this would be a great chance to clean up some of the dust behind the motherboard. Yes, I used a brush. I use a brush more often than not. Compressed gas aint cheap dude.


Anyways, this is the part where I wished I had bought a better case with a motherboard tray. Although getting the board out was easy, getting the board in was a pain in the ass.

After 5 minutes of positioning and losing screws, I finally re-mounted the motherboard and got to attaching the heatsink. Look at the pretty thermal paste. (O.O)

The best thing about the H50 is that the radiator is mounted internally which means nothing hanging around the case. However, I had to remove that dusty rear fan first.


And here's the final product.

I've yet to overclock yet, I still have to refresh myself on bclks and multipliers but I'm running 15 degrees cooler than I did using the stock heatsink fan which gives me much more headroom since I didn't want to push the system to its thermal envelope in the first place.

Now, if only Jeffrey will stop making sense so I can go out and buy a 6GB DDR3-1600 kit. I think there's a limit to how far you can push DDR3-1066. >.>