Conclusion
Today we looked at the performance of the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD Cooler and stacked it up against various competitors that we’ve previously reviewed to see how it would perform with its 18 cores clocked to 4.7GHz dumping 500w of heat into it. We’ll recap the performance below and see how the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD stood up to the heat in our kitchen!
Summary of Temperatures
From a temperature performance perspective, when the fans were at or above 1500 RPM, the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD did a fantastic job keeping our Intel 10980XE in check at stock clocks. Moving up to a mild overclock (representing about 350W of power), the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD started to sweat, but we still saw far better performance than any 360mm AIO that we tested. Stepping up to maximum overclock (representing about 500W of power), the CORSAIR H170i aced the test and at a lower fan speed than any other cooler we’ve looked at.
As the fan speeds drop on the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD, you don’t lose a lot of cooling performance until you drop below 1000RPM. Even at the slowest fan speed at stock clocks, we’d be reasonably happy with its performance without having to crank it up at all.
Summary of Sound Levels
The CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD was quiet, but not the quietest AIO cooler to cross our test bench. At full blast, it announced its cooling power at 47.8 dB(A) but quickly stepped down to inaudible as it sunk below 1000 RPM.
Overall, your ears won’t notice if you’re running the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD at 1000RPM which gives it a great intersection between performance and sound levels.
Final Points
Looking at the charts, there’s a bit to unpack here with the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD‘s performance. Previously we saw the MSI MEG S360 slap the playing field around with a silent trout as the king of the 360mm AIOs that we’ve reviewed, but then the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD dropped temperatures beyond that like it saw a state trooper (which it should, for having a much larger radiator).
Subjectively, the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD presents a well-put-together package that works within CORAIR’s iCUE ecosystem. If the rest of your rig has CORSAIR components and accessories, this unit will fit right in. The inclusion of a category of best LCD and other creature comforts makes it an impressive high-end cooling unit.
The difficult thing to swallow with this unit is its pricing. While we see CORSAIR selling it at the $309 price point (currently $279.99 special pricing at the time of writing), we also see the CORSAIR H170i ELITE CAPELLIX being sold at $199. The main difference between these units is the LCD screen is traded out for a static RGB-lit display. Of course, this is about the typical markup that we see in the market for the integration of the screen.
With all this considered, we have a new performance of the AIOs that we’ve reviewed here at The FPS Review. Sure, it may not be fair that it’s the only 420mm unit we’ve looked at so far, but it sets the standard for the future ones we’ll have on our test bench. If you’re looking for the best cooling you can buy with all the CORSAIR bling, the CORSAIR H170i ELITE LCD is certainly the way to go.
