Review: Corsair Hydro Series HG10

by Ryan Martin on 18 November 2014, 14:08

Tags: Corsair

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaclnv

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Testing methodology

To put the VGA cooler performance into perspective we're benchmarking against the standard reference cooler using a high-end Intel Haswell test platform. A detailed description of the GPU cooler being reviewed, our test platform and all comparison coolers can be found in the tables below.


Corsair HG10 Specification

GPU compatibility AMD (A1) Radeon R9 290X, 290
Compatible Water Coolers Hydro Series H55, H60, H75, H80, H80i, H100, H100i, H105, H110
Bracket Dimensions 240mm (L) x 100mm (W) x 5mm (H)
Materials Black Anodized Aluminium with Black ABS Shroud

HEXUS GPU Cooler Test Bench

Hardware Components HEXUS Review Product Page
Processor Intel Core i7-4790K (quad-core, overclocked up to 4.40GHz) June 2014 Intel.com
Motherboard Asus Z97-A May 2014 Asus.com
Memory 16GB GeIL EVO Veloce (2x8GB) DDR3 @ 1866MHz September 2012 Geil.com.tw
Graphics Card AMD Radeon R9 290 (4GB) November 2013 AMD.com
Power Supply Corsair AX760i - Corsair.com
Storage Device Hynix SH910A 256GB SSD August 2014 SKHynix.com
Chassis Corsair Graphite Series 600T October 2010 Corsair.com
Monitor Philips Brilliance 4K Ultra HD LED (288P6LJEB/00) - Philips.co.uk
Operating system Windows 8.1 (64-bit) October 2012 Microsoft.com

Benchmark Process

To get a feel for how the GPU coolers compare we run them using stock and maximum stable overclocked settings. In order to push the coolers to their maximum, the GPU voltage is upped by 100mV on the core and auxiliary when running overclocked tests.

We tested with a reference AMD R9 290 and three different VGA coolers; the reference cooler, the Raijintek Morpheus and the Corsair HG10 paired with a H75.

Clock speeds used are stated in the graphs using the format (core / memory) MHz. For example (947 / 5,000) denotes stock speeds of 947MHz core and 5,000MHz effective memory.

3DMark and Bioshock Infinite were used to gauge performance while Grid Autosport was used to record gaming load temperatures, noise and power consumption.

Notes

All three coolers managed similar maximum overclocks. The reference cooler managed 1,120MHz core and 6,000MHz memory, the Raijintek Morpheus achieved 1,135MHz core and 6,000MHz memory while the Corsair HG10 and H75 edged ahead with 1,135MHz core and 6,100MHz memory. Lower temperatures on both custom cooling solutions should enable better results from higher boost frequencies, as well.