The Importance of Teardowns: A Look Inside an All-In-One Liquid Cooler

As we began to disassemble our H100 all-in-one liquid cooler, I couldn't help but feel a sense of trepidation. The thought of what could be lurking inside was daunting, and I wasn't sure if the pump would still be functional after being disconnected. But with caution and curiosity, we set out to explore what lay within.

One of our first concerns was whether or not this was a case of a faulty pump or simply a malfunctioning IO (interrupt on output) that could be easily resolved by replacing it. We decided to have a closer look at the pump itself, disassembling as much of the cooler as possible to get a better understanding of what was going on. To our surprise, we found that there were no obvious signs of fire or struggle, but rather a buildup of corrosion and grime over time.

As we delved deeper into the pump housing, we discovered that the actual power connectors for the pump were still connected, which seemed like an oddity given its failure to function. We decided to disconnect these connectors in order to remove the pump entirely and take a closer look at the base of the unit. The PCB (printed circuit board) was surprisingly clean, with only minor buildup over one area.

However, as we moved on to inspect the base of the pump itself, we found that the pipes were indeed corroded and the top of the pump looked like it had been clogged for some time. It was clear that this unit had suffered from prolonged use and neglect, leading to a gradual decline in performance over time.

The moment of truth arrived as we carefully lifted off the entire cooler unit, revealing the pump mechanism at its core. To our surprise, it had conked closed due to corrosion and buildup, effectively rendering the system unusable. It was clear that this was not just a simple case of a faulty pump, but rather a complex issue with multiple points of failure.

As we continued to inspect the cooler, we found that the actual cold plate itself was surprisingly clean, despite the presence of grime elsewhere in the unit. The seal holding everything together seemed to be functioning properly, and the only notable damage we could find was on a small rubber piece used for sealing. Despite its age and neglect, it looked like this unit had been well-maintained at some point.

The takeaway from our experience is that even seemingly modern components can have hidden flaws or weaknesses that arise over time. The H100's all-in-one liquid cooler, while still functional, posed significant risks due to the potential for catastrophic failure if not properly maintained. As a result, we would advise users of older gaming systems to approach these units with caution and consider the cost of replacing the unit entirely.

In light of our findings, I would recommend opting for air coolers over liquid coolers when buying used hardware. Not only do they eliminate the risk of electrical shock or water damage but also offer a more reliable option that won't leave you worrying about system failure due to corroded components.

If you're in the market for an older gaming system and are considering purchasing one with an all-in-one liquid cooler, we would advise you to factor in the cost of replacing it with a new unit. Even if it's working properly at the moment, there's always a chance that issues may arise down the line, making it easier to invest in a newer model or find a reliable replacement.

With this experience behind us, I'm reminded of the importance of taking apart and inspecting components whenever possible. It's an often overlooked practice, but one that can prove invaluable in identifying potential problems before they become major issues. As always, I hope you've enjoyed our little adventure into the depths of the H100 all-in-one liquid cooler – don't forget to like and subscribe for more content like this!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall in one liquid coolers look really badass and a lot of them perform very well however buying an old one is a little bit like buying an old Italian car you're either gonna have an amazing experience or it's gonna set fire to your children I was originally gonna do a video comparing the new Corsair h100 with many acronyms at the end to an OG Corsair h100 with no acronyms at the end the whole point of that video was to see how far all-in-one liquid coolers have come but after getting my hands on an original Corsair h100 I feel like there's a different issue I need to address before getting to that video and that has to do with the long term endurance of all-in-one liquid coolers considering that the original Corsair H 100 was launched all the way back in 1875 they're quite rare today I don't think many of them have survived up until now so I was very excited to find a very promising looking listing on eBay before we look at the cooler let's just have a glance over the eBay listing to see whether or not I may have misinterpreted things as you can see the listing comes with three photos one of them actually says that the units refurbished which I didn't notice until now but you know there's nothing inherently wrong with refurbished units if you go over to the actual picture of the cooler it's pretty it's pretty vague you don't get a great look at it but it seems decent however with the correct camera angle you can make a freshly launched boil seem decent so that doesn't really mean much straight in the title it says that this is an open box Corsair H 100 now in my mind this says one of two things the first one is potentially he bought an open box from a shop which is just a unit that someone returned or the other thing that it may be is that he just opened the box and then didn't really get around to using the cooler much but the implication is that it's a fairly unused now if you head into the actual description of the unit it says that it's an open box item for a build that did not happen again there's that whole thing of maybe he just opened the box had a look at it and then didn't use it it's been put back in the box with all mounting gear even the RAF is wadded up inside so the item description kind of seems like it should be in good condition right well let's have a look at the actual unit and see what we got let's open it up and see what's going on in here yeah just from the side of the radiator it's it's pretty dusty so first off let's just take all of this stuff out here he he included all of the packaging but there's there's nothing in the packaging that there are screws pretty much everywhere in this box there's this some mounting mechanisms here so that's that's good so there's a bunch of screws in the base of the box before we look at the state of this cooler which honestly looks pretty terrifying let's just see if we can find all of the or all of the actual mounting hardware that we need there's a baggie full of standoffs for some reason I don't know if he accidentally put that in there and then let's just okay so there's one immediate problem that I see here with with with all of this aside from all the lint is I don't know where the backplate is the motherboard backplate actually doesn't seem to be included in here so I don't know how I'm gonna mount this cooler to to a CPU now the radiator is not in the best condition there are a bunch of little Nick's everywhere which is concerning I mean it's not leaking at the moment so I think it should be fine I don't think we should worry too much about leaking but on the back as well we've got some damage over here we've got some some fluff things are looking worse on the actual pump block so if you look here he still has the thermal paste on there so he didn't even clean that off this guy really needs to learn how to not blow thermal paste load all over the the pump block but I think this should work it does look like it's in working condition and that's kind of all we want at this point another issue is that it didn't actually come with any fans but with that let's clean it up and see whether or not the cooler actually works after spending a bit of time cleaning up the actual pump housing and the the base plate it seems to be in decent condition I mean I'm probably gonna give it another wipe down before I install it on a system try and get rid of those little scratches there but I think it's gonna be okay I'm not too worried about leaking although I am gonna fire it up the first time not connected to a system just to see if anything sprays anywhere but considering the fact that this cooler seems like it's been on consensually locked in someone's basement for a couple years it's not in as bad condition as you'd expect I've clearly been pretty ghetto here about how I connected it up to test it but you know it'll be enough to give us an indication of whether or not this is a murderer a IO or if it's just gonna be fine so let's see what happens is there power like is the PC on I'm not hearing a do anything I think it's broken now that we've established that the pump isn't working considering that it makes no noise let's have a look at what's going on in the actual pump housing and just have a look at the actual cooler so you just kind of clip it off like that it feels a little bit like you're gonna break it but it's fine now as you can see here the actual power connectors for the pump are are actually connected I thought that that may have been the issue so let's just disconnect those so that we can remove this and then we'll have access to the actual pump here you can have a look at the base of this of this little PCB and it seems okay I mean there's a bit of like buildup and stuff over here but nothing seems like it like it wouldn't work let's have a look at the actual base of the pump here these pipes are so-so unbel the top of the pump looks okay there are no obvious signs of like fire or struggle or anything like that but yeah let's actually take that off and see what happens this thing is a real pain in the ass to maneuver I'm half expecting radioactive material to spew out of here now we should be able to just lift this off but it's not budging oh it smells it smells pretty disgusting okay so the actual pump mechanism here ah there we go it's actually conked closed so I think that's why it wasn't working all of this corrosion and and kind of build up over here meant that it couldn't rotate in its housing anymore yeah that looks pretty disgusting yeah it's a pretty sturdy build up as well it smells it smells pretty gross considering that this is what the inside of the pump looks like I'm very interested to see the condition of the actual cold plate of the cooler I'm willing to bet a reasonable amount of money that there's gonna be yet to be discovered life growing on those fins okay there we go well it actually doesn't look too terrible if you look at it like that it's not the worst thing I've ever seen I mean there's a bit of corrosion over here but it doesn't look as bad as I was expecting it still smells disgusting though let's have a look on this side it seems it seems okay the seal is holding up okay this little rubber piece is actually in fairly decent condition considering the rest of the condition of the unit though I think that if I can get a replacement pump for this h100 we should actually be able to get it working the only reason I didn't take a dremel to the radiator was because I kinda want to try and get it working it uses something called a DC LT pump and I think I think we may be able to fix it but don't quote me on that in my opinion this teardown actually quite effectively illustrate one of the biggest potential issues around the long term endurance of all-in-one liquid coolers and it's the fact that it has an extra point of failure a pump and not only is it an extra point of failure but it's also an extra point of failure that's pushing liquid around the inside of your PC so it could potentially be catastrophic if something goes wrong while it's running and in my opinion this whole thing shows that if you're in the market for an older gaming system that you're buying off of Craigslist or Ebay or something like that I would actively avoid ones that come with all-in-one liquid coolers in them or if you are buying one with a liquid cooler in it maybe factor in the cost of replacing that cooler with a new one because even if it's working the moment that you get it and may not be working for as long as you'd imagine and who wants to deal with potential liquid PC death being excreted all around your system so that's why the good old air cooler is a better option for older used Hardware and with that thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one follow me on all of the social media and twitch where I stream on Saturdays and yeah until the next video bye byeall in one liquid coolers look really badass and a lot of them perform very well however buying an old one is a little bit like buying an old Italian car you're either gonna have an amazing experience or it's gonna set fire to your children I was originally gonna do a video comparing the new Corsair h100 with many acronyms at the end to an OG Corsair h100 with no acronyms at the end the whole point of that video was to see how far all-in-one liquid coolers have come but after getting my hands on an original Corsair h100 I feel like there's a different issue I need to address before getting to that video and that has to do with the long term endurance of all-in-one liquid coolers considering that the original Corsair H 100 was launched all the way back in 1875 they're quite rare today I don't think many of them have survived up until now so I was very excited to find a very promising looking listing on eBay before we look at the cooler let's just have a glance over the eBay listing to see whether or not I may have misinterpreted things as you can see the listing comes with three photos one of them actually says that the units refurbished which I didn't notice until now but you know there's nothing inherently wrong with refurbished units if you go over to the actual picture of the cooler it's pretty it's pretty vague you don't get a great look at it but it seems decent however with the correct camera angle you can make a freshly launched boil seem decent so that doesn't really mean much straight in the title it says that this is an open box Corsair H 100 now in my mind this says one of two things the first one is potentially he bought an open box from a shop which is just a unit that someone returned or the other thing that it may be is that he just opened the box and then didn't really get around to using the cooler much but the implication is that it's a fairly unused now if you head into the actual description of the unit it says that it's an open box item for a build that did not happen again there's that whole thing of maybe he just opened the box had a look at it and then didn't use it it's been put back in the box with all mounting gear even the RAF is wadded up inside so the item description kind of seems like it should be in good condition right well let's have a look at the actual unit and see what we got let's open it up and see what's going on in here yeah just from the side of the radiator it's it's pretty dusty so first off let's just take all of this stuff out here he he included all of the packaging but there's there's nothing in the packaging that there are screws pretty much everywhere in this box there's this some mounting mechanisms here so that's that's good so there's a bunch of screws in the base of the box before we look at the state of this cooler which honestly looks pretty terrifying let's just see if we can find all of the or all of the actual mounting hardware that we need there's a baggie full of standoffs for some reason I don't know if he accidentally put that in there and then let's just okay so there's one immediate problem that I see here with with with all of this aside from all the lint is I don't know where the backplate is the motherboard backplate actually doesn't seem to be included in here so I don't know how I'm gonna mount this cooler to to a CPU now the radiator is not in the best condition there are a bunch of little Nick's everywhere which is concerning I mean it's not leaking at the moment so I think it should be fine I don't think we should worry too much about leaking but on the back as well we've got some damage over here we've got some some fluff things are looking worse on the actual pump block so if you look here he still has the thermal paste on there so he didn't even clean that off this guy really needs to learn how to not blow thermal paste load all over the the pump block but I think this should work it does look like it's in working condition and that's kind of all we want at this point another issue is that it didn't actually come with any fans but with that let's clean it up and see whether or not the cooler actually works after spending a bit of time cleaning up the actual pump housing and the the base plate it seems to be in decent condition I mean I'm probably gonna give it another wipe down before I install it on a system try and get rid of those little scratches there but I think it's gonna be okay I'm not too worried about leaking although I am gonna fire it up the first time not connected to a system just to see if anything sprays anywhere but considering the fact that this cooler seems like it's been on consensually locked in someone's basement for a couple years it's not in as bad condition as you'd expect I've clearly been pretty ghetto here about how I connected it up to test it but you know it'll be enough to give us an indication of whether or not this is a murderer a IO or if it's just gonna be fine so let's see what happens is there power like is the PC on I'm not hearing a do anything I think it's broken now that we've established that the pump isn't working considering that it makes no noise let's have a look at what's going on in the actual pump housing and just have a look at the actual cooler so you just kind of clip it off like that it feels a little bit like you're gonna break it but it's fine now as you can see here the actual power connectors for the pump are are actually connected I thought that that may have been the issue so let's just disconnect those so that we can remove this and then we'll have access to the actual pump here you can have a look at the base of this of this little PCB and it seems okay I mean there's a bit of like buildup and stuff over here but nothing seems like it like it wouldn't work let's have a look at the actual base of the pump here these pipes are so-so unbel the top of the pump looks okay there are no obvious signs of like fire or struggle or anything like that but yeah let's actually take that off and see what happens this thing is a real pain in the ass to maneuver I'm half expecting radioactive material to spew out of here now we should be able to just lift this off but it's not budging oh it smells it smells pretty disgusting okay so the actual pump mechanism here ah there we go it's actually conked closed so I think that's why it wasn't working all of this corrosion and and kind of build up over here meant that it couldn't rotate in its housing anymore yeah that looks pretty disgusting yeah it's a pretty sturdy build up as well it smells it smells pretty gross considering that this is what the inside of the pump looks like I'm very interested to see the condition of the actual cold plate of the cooler I'm willing to bet a reasonable amount of money that there's gonna be yet to be discovered life growing on those fins okay there we go well it actually doesn't look too terrible if you look at it like that it's not the worst thing I've ever seen I mean there's a bit of corrosion over here but it doesn't look as bad as I was expecting it still smells disgusting though let's have a look on this side it seems it seems okay the seal is holding up okay this little rubber piece is actually in fairly decent condition considering the rest of the condition of the unit though I think that if I can get a replacement pump for this h100 we should actually be able to get it working the only reason I didn't take a dremel to the radiator was because I kinda want to try and get it working it uses something called a DC LT pump and I think I think we may be able to fix it but don't quote me on that in my opinion this teardown actually quite effectively illustrate one of the biggest potential issues around the long term endurance of all-in-one liquid coolers and it's the fact that it has an extra point of failure a pump and not only is it an extra point of failure but it's also an extra point of failure that's pushing liquid around the inside of your PC so it could potentially be catastrophic if something goes wrong while it's running and in my opinion this whole thing shows that if you're in the market for an older gaming system that you're buying off of Craigslist or Ebay or something like that I would actively avoid ones that come with all-in-one liquid coolers in them or if you are buying one with a liquid cooler in it maybe factor in the cost of replacing that cooler with a new one because even if it's working the moment that you get it and may not be working for as long as you'd imagine and who wants to deal with potential liquid PC death being excreted all around your system so that's why the good old air cooler is a better option for older used Hardware and with that thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one follow me on all of the social media and twitch where I stream on Saturdays and yeah until the next video bye bye