Review: Corsair A500

by Parm Mann on 17 January 2020, 14:01

Tags: Corsair

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaehr7

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Conclusion

...the only frustration is fan noise, with the A500's 120mm blowers becoming clearly audible under load.

After almost a decade of Hydro Series exclusivity, Corsair has returned to the air-cooled arena with the launch of the A500.

Priced at £90 and geared toward enthusiasts who prefer not to add liquid to their rigs, the large, dual-fan cooler is tasked with challenging established competitors from the likes of be-quiet!, Deepcool and Noctua.

No small task, yet in many aspects the A500 is a welcome alternative. Corsair's RGB-less aesthetic is tidy, installation couldn't be much simpler, the bundle is comprehensive, and height-adjustable fan rails represent a marked improvement over traditional clips. Cooling performance in our benchmarks is also on a par with the likes of the Assassin III and NH-D15, and the only frustration is fan noise, with the A500's 120mm blowers becoming clearly audible under load.

Bottom line: a £90 price tag for the A500 is perhaps optimistic, yet it is good to see Corsair add a premium air cooler to its range, and we're intrigued to see where the A-Series goes from here.

The Good
 
The Bad
High-end cooling performance
User-friendly mounting system
Ratcheted fan rails are a good idea
Comprehensive bundle
 
Gets noisy under load
£10 dearer than immediate rivals



Corsair A500

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The Corsair A500 CPU cooler is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.



HEXUS Forums :: 11 Comments

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Wow, that's terrible!

For a given noise level it'd probably not be far off the Dark Rock Slim, somewhere like that?
I'll stick with my Actic Cooling 34 Esports duo thank you. Looks better , cools great and is only £35.00 UK. This had great reviews everywhere I read when I was researching for my latest Ryzen build , love it.
Corsair's pricing is getting a bit cheeky. Stay in your lane boys, you're not Razer, you actually make decent things don't start trying to gouge us.
Think there's an error on the noise graph - Asus ROG one?
Looks right to me, its just that the CPU idle and load temps are so close together, makes it look wrong but it isn't