Is the H100x the only 240mm Corsair AIO other than the Cappellix or RGB Pro XT?

[Ca1ibos]

Don't want to spend more than I have to as the Case internals will not be visible in the HTPC style case I am building this particular PC into. CPU not decided on yet, but could be anything from a 6700K, 8700K, 10600/700K or potentially even a 12600K, all depending on whether family want to sell/swap older parts they have or I have to buy new and depending on Alderlake prices. Has to be an 240mm AIO due to chosen CPU and Case height limitations. RTX3070 going in this PC too.

Thought I was on to a winner with the €94 H100x 240mm AIO until I realised that potentially the fans run off the mother board headers/fan curves rather than AIO water temp sensors. If there is one thing I learned with all my past AIO's is that basing the fan curve off of CPU temps is a recipe for fans ramping up and down every time you even just open a media heavy website in Chrome. WHich is why I always base my CPU fan curves off of the AIO Water temp which is much more stable and thus no fan ramping for short intermittant high CPU loads.

Am I wrong about the H100x and I could in fact use iCUE to control the fans or do I have to buy the €40 more expensive H100i RGB Pro XT??

[Ca1ibos]

…..or one other potential option I have is to use my spare 280mm H110iGT, but the issue with that is that the case is about 1-1.5mm shy of being able to fit a 140mm fan.….…..

….however, if I cut the fan housing top and bottom I could gain that 2mm while the fan blades could still spin and the case plastic top and bottom would act as the replacement fan housing/airflow guide if you get me. Anyone see a problem with that?

it’d save me €90-€140, prevent a H110iGT becoming e-waste, give me the water temp fan control I want….I just need to butcher a pair of ML120 RGB’s with a dremel!

[DevBiker]

So ... the H100x connects to the motherboard fan headers so that you have some kind of control over them as it doesn't connect to iCUE. But you are absolutely 100% correct in wanting to match the fan speeds to the coolant temperature. HTPC or not, that's the proper control source for radiator fans. For that, you'll need one of the i-series (iCUE controlled) coolers.

As for cutting down the fans - you certainly could do that. How well it'd work isn't something that I can tell you. But that H110iGT is also going to be several years old and potentially near the end of its useful service life. 😞

 

[Ca1ibos]

Was talking to u/shocksim the Corsair Cooling Product Manager over on Reddit wrt to the H110iGT and when I asked him about air permeation on this particular 5yo Corsair AIO that has had the usage profile of a 2 year old one rather than a 5yo AIO because that PC was mothballed for for swathes of time over the last 5 years, he said its very likely perfectly fine with little to no permeation because of so few heat cycles or sustained periods of high heat, as he said that its water temp that sets the speed of the permeation process and I simply haven’t put it through enough of that yet despite it being 5 years old.

 

The fact that you didn’t react in horror at the idea of cutting the fan frames of some ML120’s is a vote of confidence in the idea I think!! LOL.

 

u/shocksim on Reddit is a font of knowledge about the Elite LCD upgrade kit BTW. Explained how to remove the shroud for painting/plastidipping/Vinyl and also how to unscrew and rotate the pump skirt, so that one could rotate the pump unit and Screen shroud 180deg to have the tubes exit on the left whilst still having the non symmetrically placed plastic clips of the pump skirt and  screen shroud meet. ie. no need for those of us wanting tubes exiting on the left to have to wait till the iCue Software team add Screen Rotation to the software in a future update.