The A115 Air Cooler: A Solid Middle-of-the-Pack Result with Some Disappointing Moments

As I put the Corsair A115 air cooler to the test, it quickly became apparent that this CPU liquid cooler is optimized for Intel's latest platform. While it excels at lower noise levels and delivers impressive performance on the 13900K, its results on the Ryzen 7 7600X were a different story altogether.

The A115 starts off strong, with some incredibly quiet running levels that showcase its ability to tame the beast of a CPU without sacrificing any significant performance. However, as temperatures rise, the cooler's performance begins to falter. The A115 hits the 7950 X's maximum T Junction at every decel level, struggling to keep up with the intense heat generated by this powerful processor.

This trend is not new to the world of air coolers. Typically, coolers that excel on Intel platforms tend to struggle on AMD systems. Only a handful of coolers, including Thermalite and Deep Cool's Assassin series, have managed to defy this pattern, but even those exceptions are few and far between. The A115, however, is a prime example of how the trend holds true.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the A115's performance on AMD systems is its inability to effectively transfer heat between the CPU and the fins. As temperatures rise, the cooler's ability to dissipate heat through the fin stack becomes increasingly unreliable. This bottleneck prevents the A115 from reaching its full potential, resulting in subpar performance.

The price point of the A115 also raises some eyebrows. While it may be a great option for those running Intel systems, its cost is not justified by its performance on AMD platforms. In fact, even smaller coolers like the Phantom Spirit Peerless Assassin and AK 620 were able to outperform the A115 at a fraction of the price.

This trend of air coolers exceling on Intel platforms but faltering on AMD systems is becoming increasingly common. Over the past few months, I've tested not one, not two, but three brand-new air coolers that have delivered impressive results on Intel, only to disappoint on AMD. This trend is taking a significant chunk out of the market, and it's leaving users with limited options for high-performance cooling solutions.

In my interactions with Corsair, I reached out to them to express my disappointment with the A115's performance on AMD systems. Their response was underwhelming, stating that I should have expected such results. This lack of accountability from a major brand like Corsair is not only disappointing but also concerning.

So, what can we take away from this experience? On Intel platforms, the A115 delivers impressive performance and quiet operation, making it a great option for those with an Intel-based system. However, if you're running an AMD system, especially one powered by the Ryzen 7 7600X or 7950 X, I would strongly recommend exploring alternative options.

Thermalite's liquid coolers, for example, have consistently delivered exceptional performance on AMD systems, even at high temperatures. Similarly, Deep Cool's Assassin series has shown promise in recent tests, offering impressive results without the hefty price tag. The A115 may be a great option for Intel users, but for those with an AMD system, there are better alternatives available.

In conclusion, while the Corsair A115 air cooler delivers solid performance and quiet operation on Intel platforms, its disappointing results on AMD systems make it a less attractive option for many users. With so many other coolers available that excel on AMD platforms, I would recommend exploring alternative options to find the best cooling solution for your needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso if you had come to me a year ago and said Mike what is the last thing that you expected to see in the next year I would have said another Corsair air cooler but guess what Corsair they are coming out with the a15 another air cooler and honestly the reason why I'm shocked is because the last time they tried their hand at air cooling it ended up being an utter and complete disaster its performance was absolutely atrocious and I even tried everything I could possibly think of to fix it and I mean everything and that included lapping the Bas it was just beyond help so yeah on the last outing Corsair did everything wrong and set an obviously very low bar for anything else that they released in the air cooling space but look the a115 takes that formula and completely throws it out the window and starts over from the ground up instead of a heat snc design that feels like it was from another ERA this one has a dual Tower layout with a dense fin array and small returns that are supposed to help Channel The Air rather than allowing it to escape out the sides instead of four heat pipes running into an HDT base with finishing that would make an air cooler bought off TAMU embarrassed there six highly Bend 6 mm heat pipes that terminate in a well-finished solid nickel-plated copper base that's slightly concave instead of two anemic 120 mm fans from the last cooler we've got a pair of af140 Elites now these are two of course A's highest end fans that they have right now of course that adds to the a15s overall height especially if you use higher memory modules but the fans are installed on a brilliant rail system need them to move upwards just push up or down simple as that instead of that odd layout that caused installation issues for the A500 on some motherboards this cooler should be WorryFree at least as far as we tested it on a full dozen Intel and AMD boards instead of of a frustrating mounting system that caused some conflicts on certain motherboards the a15s is straightforward easy to understand and doesn't require any visual guesswork when tightening down the retention screws instead of trying to get an overly clean look by just adding some ugly plastic bits Corsair just embraced the air cooling look but they coated the entire thing in actually what I'd call one of the best matte black finishes I've ever seen it just eats the light and somehow doesn't show any fingerprints whatsoever and you know what else doesn't show any fingerprints this case from fractal Earth she is beautiful I have my favorite spots in nature to observe and visit and I'm sure you do too and I feel we all need a little beauty in our daily computer life something that reminds you a case can be special too feeling proud of your process to get there partially to Showcase your lifestyle with this one component that is surprisingly organic both in design and Hardware fitment it's not just the case it's a tera available only on our beautiful Earth so at first glance the a115 looks like everything the A500 wasn't it looks like a Amazing air cooler now the only thing that is probably going to hold you back is its price and that has actually been revised downwards twice already by Corsair before this video even goes live first they said it was going to go for $125 us yep that's right5 bucks then we were told it's going to be $115 and now finally it's a hundred bucks which is still a lot given what else is out there especially from the likes of thermal right ID Cooling and deep cool but it could have been a lot worse I'm looking at you be quiet and even with that price I feel like there's a couple of small things that are still missing with this cooler the first thing is a tube of thermal compound yes corsera does pre-install thermal compound on the a15s base but what happens if you need it to remounted for whatever reason well your so because they didn't even include a tiny 1 G tube you're going to have to go out and buy another tube of thermal compound and the final thing is and yes I am a little bit old school with this but I would really appreciate a physical instruction manual it is just so much easier to go back and forth when you're installing a cooler or any component for that matter rather than going to your phone scanning a QR code and hoping that link that's linked to the QR code actually opens also Al yes those sliding fan brackets are freaking brilliant but I'd like to see their detent spacing decreased just a bit right now every stopping point is at increments of about 3/8 in or 10 mm so there's no fine-tuning for memory clearance every single time we mounted it the fan was either overly high or too low anyways the bigger question here is how does the a115 perform because based on its price it sets some very lofty expectations but on the positive side what I can say is that its fans are some of the quietest that we've experienced in the last year of testing let's have a listen well that definitely sets the stage for our performance testing but look quiet fans do not necessarily lead to a good cooler so let's start out with the Intel testing and go from there at the lowest thermal output so something that approximates a 13600 K the a15 is unbelievably good at lower noise levels it's simply the best air cooler we've ever tested full stop essentially at the 36 and 37 dbel points it can deliver class leading performance and that's so important for people who care about how loud their system gets for optimal temperatures if we break this down against every other heat sink we've tested at a constant 38 DB it becomes even more apparent Corsair absolutely nailed it and moving up to 253 Watts shows that this isn't a one hit Wonder either at every single deciel point it's either tied with or beats some legendary air coolers like the frost Spirit D5 and Phantom Spirit but for a massive cooler like this one the most important thing is low noise performance and at 36 and 37 DB where its raw thermal mask can be put to good use and again it's at those lower noise levels where the a115 can pull further ahead of smaller heat sinks like the frost Spirit Peerless assassin and dark Rock Elite you can really see this test separates the the men from the boys with a pretty significant gap between the best of the best coolers and all the rest when we normalize down to 38 DB but nothing and I mean nothing can stop an air cooler from hitting Intel's thermal ceiling when operating without any limits whatsoever so the only way we can really see any differentiation between the coolers is by drilling down into clock speeds and here the a115 is again one of the absolute best around as a matter of fact at 43 DB it's able to hit 5.4 GHz which is the highest we've seen so far even gaming sees corsa's latest cooler becoming the best performer we've seen at a few noise levels but once again it's particularly strong under the 40 D mark at least on the Intel platform this is actually an important win for corsera since there's been a ton of supposedly high-end air coolers that end up struggling here since they can't handle higher ambient temperatures very well the Assassin 4 is a perfect example of that now if this review stopped right right here and right now it's pretty obvious that corsair's a115 would probably get our seal of approval boom this is a damn good product it basically mops the floor with coolers like the assassin 4 and dark Rock Elite while costing a bit less yes I understand that the thermal right coolers are out there and from a price to Performance ratio those still went out but at least at low noise levels the a115 is is really really on another level the problem is we don't stop here at least that's a problem for Corsair what we do now is we get on to AMD testing and if anything has shown us what separates the men from the boys when it comes to a great all round air cooler it is the am5 platform and at least on the ryzen 7 7600 X it becomes pretty obvious that corsera Focus was optimizing on Intel's latest platform the best thing I can say about this is that it beats be quiets utterly disappointing dark rocket Elite but this isn't a result I expected especially after seeing what this thing did on a 13900 K I mean look overall this is a solid middleof the- pack result when lined up against all the other coolers but you aren't paying a 100 bucks for mediocrity are you and if you thought upping the tempo with a hotter running CPU would do anything sadly the a115 starts looking even worse than before actually this flat lining of overall high temperatures alongside the amazing Intel results Point towards there being a bottleneck between the CPU and the bass heat just isn't being effectively transferred between the two so it can go up through the heat pipes and be dissipated through the fin stack this isn't the first time we've seen something like this either typically coolers that do super well on Intel tend to struggle on AMD the only exceptions are thermalite and deep cool these days they've just found some sort of special secret sauce that works across every single platform with Corsair it just gets all that much worse as temperatures rise with the a115 hitting the 7950 X's maximum T Junction at every decel level I mean sure in terms of clock speeds its raw thermal Mass helps below 38 DB but after that point it just ends up fighting a losing battle against a bunch of heat sinks that cost a fraction of the price temperatures and gaming really don't improve my perspective of the a115 either because it's posting some of the worst results we've seen from a cooler that costs this much I was actually thinking it's size would have at least some effect here but in the end even smaller coolers like the Phantom Spirit Peerless assassin and even AK 620 were far better it's pretty obvious that regardless of how you look at things these results on the am5 platform are a massive disappointment for anybody hoping that this would be another great allround air cooler that did amazing things on every single platform but I'm going to give credit where credit is due because the a15 is Vindication for Corsair after what happened with the A500 they could have just said look forget about we're never launching another high-end air cooler again that is basically pushed to the side we're only going to be focusing on aios and overpriced fans for the foreseeable future but they didn't they made this and it is a huge step forward it is almost your perfect air cooler provided you're on the Intel platform because I I'm going to really level with everybody right now this is sort becoming a trend in the last couple of months we've tested three brand new air coolers including this one that did so well on Intel but just they they they fell apart on am5 and to me that is really taking a massive chunk of the market now and in the future and saying look if you want great performance for the price on your chosen platform you have to look somewhere else and to me that's that's just not acceptable because it's not like some other companies like noctu aren't making an effort to see how am5 reacts to coolers and making actual changes to their mounting kits in order to satisfy am5 users and yes I reached out to Corsair I showed them Point Blank every single one of our numbers for this cooler on am5 and what did they say they said well that's pretty much to be expected and to me that's just not an acceptable answer so in the end what Corsair has done is create a very onedimensional cooler if you're on an Intel platform by all means this gets my stamp of approval what it can do especially at lower noise levels is absolutely incredible on the other hand if you're running an AMD system especially am5 I would recommend you just look elsewhere look at something from thermal R look at something from Deep cool maybe not their assassin 4 but anything else the price to Performance ratio on those coolers is going to blow this thing straight out of the water and that is a little bit disappointing for Corsair because they almost hit this one out of the park but anyways I'm Mike with har conu I hope that you enjoyed this content and I'm going to see you in the next one have a great dayso if you had come to me a year ago and said Mike what is the last thing that you expected to see in the next year I would have said another Corsair air cooler but guess what Corsair they are coming out with the a15 another air cooler and honestly the reason why I'm shocked is because the last time they tried their hand at air cooling it ended up being an utter and complete disaster its performance was absolutely atrocious and I even tried everything I could possibly think of to fix it and I mean everything and that included lapping the Bas it was just beyond help so yeah on the last outing Corsair did everything wrong and set an obviously very low bar for anything else that they released in the air cooling space but look the a115 takes that formula and completely throws it out the window and starts over from the ground up instead of a heat snc design that feels like it was from another ERA this one has a dual Tower layout with a dense fin array and small returns that are supposed to help Channel The Air rather than allowing it to escape out the sides instead of four heat pipes running into an HDT base with finishing that would make an air cooler bought off TAMU embarrassed there six highly Bend 6 mm heat pipes that terminate in a well-finished solid nickel-plated copper base that's slightly concave instead of two anemic 120 mm fans from the last cooler we've got a pair of af140 Elites now these are two of course A's highest end fans that they have right now of course that adds to the a15s overall height especially if you use higher memory modules but the fans are installed on a brilliant rail system need them to move upwards just push up or down simple as that instead of that odd layout that caused installation issues for the A500 on some motherboards this cooler should be WorryFree at least as far as we tested it on a full dozen Intel and AMD boards instead of of a frustrating mounting system that caused some conflicts on certain motherboards the a15s is straightforward easy to understand and doesn't require any visual guesswork when tightening down the retention screws instead of trying to get an overly clean look by just adding some ugly plastic bits Corsair just embraced the air cooling look but they coated the entire thing in actually what I'd call one of the best matte black finishes I've ever seen it just eats the light and somehow doesn't show any fingerprints whatsoever and you know what else doesn't show any fingerprints this case from fractal Earth she is beautiful I have my favorite spots in nature to observe and visit and I'm sure you do too and I feel we all need a little beauty in our daily computer life something that reminds you a case can be special too feeling proud of your process to get there partially to Showcase your lifestyle with this one component that is surprisingly organic both in design and Hardware fitment it's not just the case it's a tera available only on our beautiful Earth so at first glance the a115 looks like everything the A500 wasn't it looks like a Amazing air cooler now the only thing that is probably going to hold you back is its price and that has actually been revised downwards twice already by Corsair before this video even goes live first they said it was going to go for $125 us yep that's right5 bucks then we were told it's going to be $115 and now finally it's a hundred bucks which is still a lot given what else is out there especially from the likes of thermal right ID Cooling and deep cool but it could have been a lot worse I'm looking at you be quiet and even with that price I feel like there's a couple of small things that are still missing with this cooler the first thing is a tube of thermal compound yes corsera does pre-install thermal compound on the a15s base but what happens if you need it to remounted for whatever reason well your so because they didn't even include a tiny 1 G tube you're going to have to go out and buy another tube of thermal compound and the final thing is and yes I am a little bit old school with this but I would really appreciate a physical instruction manual it is just so much easier to go back and forth when you're installing a cooler or any component for that matter rather than going to your phone scanning a QR code and hoping that link that's linked to the QR code actually opens also Al yes those sliding fan brackets are freaking brilliant but I'd like to see their detent spacing decreased just a bit right now every stopping point is at increments of about 3/8 in or 10 mm so there's no fine-tuning for memory clearance every single time we mounted it the fan was either overly high or too low anyways the bigger question here is how does the a115 perform because based on its price it sets some very lofty expectations but on the positive side what I can say is that its fans are some of the quietest that we've experienced in the last year of testing let's have a listen well that definitely sets the stage for our performance testing but look quiet fans do not necessarily lead to a good cooler so let's start out with the Intel testing and go from there at the lowest thermal output so something that approximates a 13600 K the a15 is unbelievably good at lower noise levels it's simply the best air cooler we've ever tested full stop essentially at the 36 and 37 dbel points it can deliver class leading performance and that's so important for people who care about how loud their system gets for optimal temperatures if we break this down against every other heat sink we've tested at a constant 38 DB it becomes even more apparent Corsair absolutely nailed it and moving up to 253 Watts shows that this isn't a one hit Wonder either at every single deciel point it's either tied with or beats some legendary air coolers like the frost Spirit D5 and Phantom Spirit but for a massive cooler like this one the most important thing is low noise performance and at 36 and 37 DB where its raw thermal mask can be put to good use and again it's at those lower noise levels where the a115 can pull further ahead of smaller heat sinks like the frost Spirit Peerless assassin and dark Rock Elite you can really see this test separates the the men from the boys with a pretty significant gap between the best of the best coolers and all the rest when we normalize down to 38 DB but nothing and I mean nothing can stop an air cooler from hitting Intel's thermal ceiling when operating without any limits whatsoever so the only way we can really see any differentiation between the coolers is by drilling down into clock speeds and here the a115 is again one of the absolute best around as a matter of fact at 43 DB it's able to hit 5.4 GHz which is the highest we've seen so far even gaming sees corsa's latest cooler becoming the best performer we've seen at a few noise levels but once again it's particularly strong under the 40 D mark at least on the Intel platform this is actually an important win for corsera since there's been a ton of supposedly high-end air coolers that end up struggling here since they can't handle higher ambient temperatures very well the Assassin 4 is a perfect example of that now if this review stopped right right here and right now it's pretty obvious that corsair's a115 would probably get our seal of approval boom this is a damn good product it basically mops the floor with coolers like the assassin 4 and dark Rock Elite while costing a bit less yes I understand that the thermal right coolers are out there and from a price to Performance ratio those still went out but at least at low noise levels the a115 is is really really on another level the problem is we don't stop here at least that's a problem for Corsair what we do now is we get on to AMD testing and if anything has shown us what separates the men from the boys when it comes to a great all round air cooler it is the am5 platform and at least on the ryzen 7 7600 X it becomes pretty obvious that corsera Focus was optimizing on Intel's latest platform the best thing I can say about this is that it beats be quiets utterly disappointing dark rocket Elite but this isn't a result I expected especially after seeing what this thing did on a 13900 K I mean look overall this is a solid middleof the- pack result when lined up against all the other coolers but you aren't paying a 100 bucks for mediocrity are you and if you thought upping the tempo with a hotter running CPU would do anything sadly the a115 starts looking even worse than before actually this flat lining of overall high temperatures alongside the amazing Intel results Point towards there being a bottleneck between the CPU and the bass heat just isn't being effectively transferred between the two so it can go up through the heat pipes and be dissipated through the fin stack this isn't the first time we've seen something like this either typically coolers that do super well on Intel tend to struggle on AMD the only exceptions are thermalite and deep cool these days they've just found some sort of special secret sauce that works across every single platform with Corsair it just gets all that much worse as temperatures rise with the a115 hitting the 7950 X's maximum T Junction at every decel level I mean sure in terms of clock speeds its raw thermal Mass helps below 38 DB but after that point it just ends up fighting a losing battle against a bunch of heat sinks that cost a fraction of the price temperatures and gaming really don't improve my perspective of the a115 either because it's posting some of the worst results we've seen from a cooler that costs this much I was actually thinking it's size would have at least some effect here but in the end even smaller coolers like the Phantom Spirit Peerless assassin and even AK 620 were far better it's pretty obvious that regardless of how you look at things these results on the am5 platform are a massive disappointment for anybody hoping that this would be another great allround air cooler that did amazing things on every single platform but I'm going to give credit where credit is due because the a15 is Vindication for Corsair after what happened with the A500 they could have just said look forget about we're never launching another high-end air cooler again that is basically pushed to the side we're only going to be focusing on aios and overpriced fans for the foreseeable future but they didn't they made this and it is a huge step forward it is almost your perfect air cooler provided you're on the Intel platform because I I'm going to really level with everybody right now this is sort becoming a trend in the last couple of months we've tested three brand new air coolers including this one that did so well on Intel but just they they they fell apart on am5 and to me that is really taking a massive chunk of the market now and in the future and saying look if you want great performance for the price on your chosen platform you have to look somewhere else and to me that's that's just not acceptable because it's not like some other companies like noctu aren't making an effort to see how am5 reacts to coolers and making actual changes to their mounting kits in order to satisfy am5 users and yes I reached out to Corsair I showed them Point Blank every single one of our numbers for this cooler on am5 and what did they say they said well that's pretty much to be expected and to me that's just not an acceptable answer so in the end what Corsair has done is create a very onedimensional cooler if you're on an Intel platform by all means this gets my stamp of approval what it can do especially at lower noise levels is absolutely incredible on the other hand if you're running an AMD system especially am5 I would recommend you just look elsewhere look at something from thermal R look at something from Deep cool maybe not their assassin 4 but anything else the price to Performance ratio on those coolers is going to blow this thing straight out of the water and that is a little bit disappointing for Corsair because they almost hit this one out of the park but anyways I'm Mike with har conu I hope that you enjoyed this content and I'm going to see you in the next one have a great day\n"