Stefan Mileschin

Although Corsair's cooling division is more widely known for its extensive range of CLC CPU cooling solutions, Corsair has once again moved back into the air-cooled CPU cooler business. Corsair has once before tried to tackle the market with its older A50 and A70 models, the new A500 looks to target Noctua's NH-D15 with some very interesting features.

Moving back into the air cooling market after the launch of the Corsair A50 and A70 air CPU coolers, the new Corsair A500 looks to add a new dimension to its current cooling line-up. More known for its closed-loop liquid solutions, the A500 is a dual fan tower cooler with cooling capabilities stretching up to 250 W TDP. While the A500 doesn't support AMD's TR4 socket, it supports Intel's 2011 LGA20xx sockets, including AM4, AM3, FM2, and LGA115x.

In an interesting design twist to conventional tower coolers, the Corsair A500 uses a ratchet-style slide and lock fan retention system, which is designed to make users lives easier when installing. It is a full tower cooler with dimensions of 144 x 169 x 171 mm, with two of Corsair's ML120 cooling fans which can ramp up to 2400 rpm are included in the package. On the cooling plate, Corsair has pre-applied its XTM50 thermal paste out of the box for first-time applications.

When asked about why Corsair is going the air-cooling route after many successful AIO launches, it stated that the air cooling market is still huge with users, especially those who still don't trust liquid-cooled solutions due to rare issues such as leaks. Aiming for Noctua's NH-D15 CPU cooler which many in the industry see as the golden standard, Corsair states the performance is on par with the NH-D15, if not better in certain situations.

Corsair has priced the A500 at $99.99 and is available to pre-order directly on Corsair's store. The A500 is expected to hit retail channels later on in the week.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15373...cooling-at-100