14 DAY TRIAL // Water cooling systems have an advantage over air-based ones in that they don't use fans to directly chill the CPUs or GPUs they are installed on. The pump/reservoir is the only part with active cooling, and liquid is easier to chill than metal.
This usually means that water cooling systems allow a computer to run more silently than otherwise. Unfortunately, this does not extend to all-in-one versions.
All-in-one liquid coolers are made to work like air-based ones, meaning that they don't need pumps, tanks and other components to do their job, unlike water blocks.
However, this also means that they need to keep the coolant properly chilled without assistance, which means fans. And the stronger a closed-loop cooler is, the noisier it gets.
Such is the case with Corsair's Hydro Series H110i GT. While it is silent enough most of the time, high workloads can cause up to 43 dBA of noise or more.
The Corsair Hydro Series H110i GT
The newcomer has the standard setup: a water block for the CPU, two pumps and a radiator holding most of the coolant and the active fans.
There are two fans, each with a diameter of 140 mm, which means that the whole radiator measures 280 mm in length.
The top rotary speed of the fans is 2,100 RPM (rotations per minute) and the airflow can go as high as 113 CFM (cubic feet per minute).
By extension, the noise output is a pretty high 43 dBA, each. It shouldn't act cumulatively, not too much, but that is still quite a bit of noise.
Fortunately, buyers of high-end cooling systems like this one probably have the money and disposition to acquire headphones with noise canceling. Also, if the case is reasonably dampened, the dBA should be a non-issue.
A point of note is that Corsair decided to use the SP140L PWM "high-torque" fans which lack any sort of LED illumination. They do, however, get 4-pin PWM power inputs.
Availability
The Corsair Hydro Series H110i GT all-in-one liquid CPU cooler has a price of $130 / €115 and is compatible with Intel LGA 1150 and LGA 2011v3 processors, as well as AMD AM3+ and FM2+ sockets, among others.
