Summary
The Corsair A500 polarizes a little and in the end its thick hips and the two pre-assembled vacuum cleaners become a bit of a disaster in direct comparison. The idea with the sliders on the fans is innovative and new, but a proper holding clamp system would hardly have been more unwieldy, but much more space- and material-saving. Anyone who knows the tooling costs for such injection moulded parts will surely now also know where the high price of the A500 comes from.
Visually, all this is fully compatible and with the cooling efficiency of a Noctua NH-U12A close to failure is not a broken leg, because this happens to many in-house Noctua coolers. Seen in this way, the Corsair A500 is a quite potent, powerful cooling cloister, which, however, has to free up its place in the housing, swinging hips first. Here you really have to include the mounting height and slot assignment of the motherboard, otherwise there is a nasty 100-euro awakening.
The cooling performance is, let's put aside the operating noise, without any real criticism. After all, even a short attempt with just under 300 watts was still stable. But you don't have to provoke the duo-infernale in the form of the two air-icussto to craggy continuous-tone-orgies, otherwise you will end up almost deaf. With other fans, it would all look much nicer, but Corsair just doesn't have anything suitable in the portfolio. Then it is time to throw in the appetite suppressants and tighten the belt of the fan curve in the BIOS.
The accessories are extensive, the handling is easy and the one with the sliders is really quite practical. In the end, you really have to ask yourself why Corsair left the pages open. So you will certainly give away 2-3 degrees, because the air flow is a bit up to the sides. The pull fan at the back can't suck that much, so that nothing escapes laterally. In addition, the voltage converters are far too deep for many boards to be sold as a side effect of PR-ready.
Conclusion
Corsair, despite the appropriate criticism on my part, can really be congratulated on the first work, because the A500 is an extremely potent air cooler, which can be used loosely into the enthusiast area without hesitation. The reserves are brutal, one must admit this without envy. The cooler certainly has many interesting features and offers many features that will appeal to potential buyers. But he also has three minor problems, which should not be concealed and which unfortunately stand in the way of a direct purchase tip as an explicit recommendation. But he passed the test anyway, even with flying colours.
On the one hand there is the sporty price, but on the other hand there is also the operating noise of the fans and the all-too-baroque dimensions, which could quickly collide with the system. None of this has to be an exclusion criterion if we can come to terms with these points, because the quality of workmanship is astonishingly high for a first product and free of any objections. From this point of view, the cooler has two faces. An absolutely cool and high-quality as well as a somewhat noisy and cheeky.
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