 Corsair Raptor K40 keyboard and M45 mouse are designed to provide best-in-class features and performance for gaming. Click now to learn more. When it comes to CPU liquid coolers, it's not exactly rocket surgery. It's mostly a function of how good are the fans and how much surface area can you throw at it. I mean, there can be other factors. For example, with Corsair's H100i, there's excellent software integration with their Corsair links and software for things like monitoring liquid temperature, monitoring fan RPM, CPU temperature, fan control, all that kind of cool stuff. But those things tend to add cost to the unit and tend not to necessarily contribute to raw performance. The H105 goes to the H110 school of product design, which is a little bit more bare bones in terms of extra stuff, but definitely targeting performance. So unlike the H100i, the H105 features a thicker radiator, and unlike the H110, which features a thin radiator, but with 140 millimeter fans, the H105 features 120 millimeter fans on its rad. So it should sit somewhere in between those two in terms of performance. But if I had to hazard a guess, I would say particularly at lower RPMs, it's probably going to be closer to the H110 because of the design of the radiator, with a little bit lower fin density than I'm used to seeing with these all-in-one units, which I think is actually probably a good thing because as soon as you throw dual 120 millimeter fans at cooling a single CPU, even if it's quite a powerful one, unless you're talking about extreme overclocking, it's pretty much enough. So you might as well go after silence. And speaking of silence, the two included fans are PWM, so this is a bit of a nice touch here, and they can operate from anywhere from 800 RPM to 2700 RPM. So 800 RPM is going to be very, very quiet on a 38 millimeter thick radiator like this one, that's compared to 25 millimeters, which is the more typical thin radiator setup, like what you'll find on an H100i, and then all the way up to 2700 RPM, which for me would be uncomfortably loud, and I probably wouldn't recommend that so much. Now the included fans, aside from being PWM and being good in that way, are pretty basic. These are SP120L fans, unlike the regular SP120s, which are available in a quiet edition and performance edition. The main differences there being that the regular SP120s have swappable color rings, as well as rubber isolating grommets in the corners, and just generally feel a little bit nicer overall in terms of build quality. Now if you did decide that you weren't going to use the L series fans and you were going to upgrade to SPs, there's another little cool thing. So Corsair has changed the design of the block and pump combo unit here. They've changed the ID, and they've added a little swappable ring, so it comes with the same colors as you can get in AF and SP series fans. You've got blue and red, but unfortunately not white, so there's a gray one on there by default. They've also updated the mounting hardware just a touch, so it comes with the Intel hold down pre-installed now. It comes with a slightly updated backplate. This is an Asetek design, so it's not really something we've never seen before, but the little pieces are a little bit easier to slide. So whether you're mounting on LGA 11.5x, 1366, or 2011, you're going to be able to get it in the right position quite easily, although remember guys, 2011 does have its own backplate built onto the motherboard, just like AMD sockets. So same thing for the AMD hardware, you're just going to get a hold down, which can be swapped by just undoing these four little clips right here, popping off the bottom ring, just like that, pulling off the retention or pulling off the hold down, and then swapping on the appropriate AMD one. So you can do that relatively easily, and then it'll just screw directly into the backplate that is built into your motherboard, giving you compatibility for FM sockets as well as AM sockets. The last thing they've updated in terms of the ID is they have changed the thumb screws a little bit, and then other than that, I think that's pretty much it for accessories. You also get a PWM Y cable, so this will allow you to plug both of the fans into your CPU fan header, so you can actually control both of them with PWM using a single fan header, so that's actually really handy. That's, from what I've seen, the best way to do PWM control, because the CPU fan header tends to be the least broken of all the PWM implementations on a given motherboard or in a given system. It uses quarter inch tubing, but I'm not really convinced that that's going to be a problem for it, because these all-in-one liquid coolers don't tend to have extremely high flow rates to the point where 3 eighths or even half inch tubing would make much of a difference, and other than that, it's going to come down to the radiator right here. So 38 millimeters thick, as I mentioned before, a little bit lower fin density than we've necessarily seen in the past, and, well, the thickness. Well, okay, I've talked a lot about the thicknesses, because that's the main difference here. It's going to affect performance, and it's also going to affect compatibility. So you're going to want to make sure that if you plan to install the H105 in your case, you have enough clearance not only for a 25 millimeter thick fan, but also a 38 millimeter thick radiator. It comes with all the mounting hardware that you'll need to mount the fans on, either side, mount the radiator directly to the case and then the fans to that, or mount the radiator through the fan to the case from the top, or whatever else you need to do. You just need to make sure you have enough room, which leads us to performance. Off to Luke for that. All right, so to start us off, there's been a test bench change. Now we are running an X79 Deluxe from ASUS and a 4820K from Intel. This was because in the previous setup, I was noticing some pretty major inconsistencies when trying to test the H105 from Corsair, and it wasn't testing the same every run, and it was kind of all over the place with massive deltas. So I thought there might be something wrong, swapped out hardware, and now we're getting much more consistent numbers. This was isolated to just this test, so it must have been recently, and I don't think it's going to affect other videos that we've recorded, so don't worry about that. As for installing it, it was much better than the H110, which has the kind of older installation setup, but it wasn't quite as good as an H100i, which has the super nice magnetic locking plates and all that kind of stuff that Corsair has put on it, but it was definitely in the higher echelon of installation processes for coolers that I have used, and it performed pretty much exactly where we expected it. It performed in between an H100i and an H110. Now what I want in the future, as all of those things are fairly self-explanatory, and you guys probably heard that from Linus previously because he expected it and it was true, what I want to see in the future is I want them all to come together. I want like essentially an H115i or an HAwesomei or something, I don't really know, but I want them all to come together. I want the size of the H110, I want the thickness of the H105, and I want the advanced technologies and connectivity and mounting system of an H100i. What do you guys want? What are you looking for in a cooler? Are you even looking for an AIO or are you more focused still on air? Let me know in the comments below. Like and favorite the video depending on whether you run air or water, and as always subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.