Corsair H150i Elite LCD CPU Cooler: How to Install and Set Up on the AMD AM4 Platform

hey there i'm ari from the tech buyers guru and i've got another how-to video for you here on the channel today this time around i'll be showing you how to install and configure the h150i elite lcd liquid cpu cooler from corsair that you see right here in my test system it's got a lot of options a lot of customization and that means there are a lot of things to learn about this really awesome new cooler from corsair now a couple things i should mention right off the bat if you're interested in the performance of this cooler i actually have a separate review i'm going to link to right up here you can check that out to see how this cooler compares to a lot of the best 360 millimeter coolers on the market other thing i want to mention that most of what i'm going to be saying is going to apply to the other models in this lineup so they have the h100i which is a 240 millimeter model and they also have the h170i which is the 420 millimeter model with that said let's open the box and get to work in the box you get a number of retention brackets the commander core control unit three fans and of course the radiator and pump assembly being a high-end offering you're getting a lot of different mounting brackets with this cooler that includes am4 which i'm going to be using in this installation video as well as threadripper for folks on that high-end platform and every intel bracket you could want from 2011 to 2066 to 1151 to 1200 and socket 1700 very important for users of the latest intel standard now in terms of the fans these are going to be proprietary models you have a standard pwm connector but then you have the proprietary rgb connector that only works with corsair system this is the commander node module it slips right in really easy to use as does the pwm fan cable and then you can control up to six fans with this controller three of them will be on the cooler itself that's the h150 you have three more for case fans if you have them in your system but again these are for corsair fans only now here you have the pump assembly it's covered in plastic to keep it safe you do have that screen that you don't want damage during shipment and i'll remove this plastic coating on the pump itself and come back to you in a moment now underneath that plastic lid was the pre-applied thermal paste this is a really nice feature for folks who don't want to bother with applying thermal paste themselves one thing you'll want to make sure of is that before you put it down you do change out your bracket so i'm going to switch out the standard intel for the am4 bracket it's pretty easy to do as long as you don't stick your fingers in that thermal paste be very careful about that as you're pulling these brackets off you can easily smudge that paste if you're not paying attention now i'm gonna slip the am4 brackets on again this is fairly simple it's also very standard system a lot of coolers use this system so just make sure that snaps into place on both sides and you'll be ready to go with am4 same thing if you're switching over to threadripper or any of the other brackets included in the box the next step will actually be to install this in the case and it's a multi-step process now i like to install the radiator first a lot of how-to videos show you installing the radiator after you install the pump but the radiator is a bigger object here it's the heavier thing i don't want it dangling hitting my motherboard so i'm going to go ahead and install that first and i'm going to do it at the top of the case that's what i recommend based on my testing it's definitely the better thermal layout overall for a hot running system and because i've chosen to do an exhaust setup i want to make sure i orient my fans correctly the fan blades are always the intake side of the fan so i want these fans to blow through the radiator and out of the case the other thing you want to make sure is that the cables are pointed in the right direction so if i mount these without thinking about the orientation of the radiator i might actually end up having these cables dangling in the front of the case just visualize it maybe place that radiator with your hands at the top of your case and visualize where those cables are going to go now i will affix those fans to the cooler using the included screws there are actually 24 of them in case you want to go push pull here i'm just doing the push arrangement so you can see my three elite rgb fans connected to that cooler and we're ready to attach the radio to the top of the chassis using the included screws and washers which prevent damage to the bracket in your case now with most cases you'll be mounting through the roof my 802 case from be quiet actually has this pull out tray which is really convenient and also nice for you guys to get a better look at what's happening as i'll show you in a minute but do keep in mind that when you mount this radiator you may have a little bit of leeway forward and aft but you want to make sure your pump actually reaches the cpu so the hoses on this cooler a little bit shorter than most about 380 millimeters versus 450 and that means that if you mount it all the way forward in your chassis you may not actually reach the cpu bracket so before fully fixing that radiator make sure the pump will reach to mount the cooler on the motherboard you have to locate your am4 back plate that comes with your amd motherboard and it's pre-attached with these am4 clips now you'll be removing these clips but you need the back plate so make sure you have it if you can't find it you probably put it aside or maybe in your motherboard's box here are the standoffs included with the corsair cooler make sure you're using the ones for am4 they do have two different thread sizes so one is big enough to fit into that bracket and the other one's a little bit smaller and is used for the corsair clips i will go ahead and install these by hand and when i'm done with all four one thing that you will notice and maybe be a little bit concerned about is that this bracket actually floats so you can see there's some leeway here there's some play that is not a flaw that is just how the system works once you attach the pump it will actually cinch up and be tight but i know some people are concerned that this thing is in motion before it's fully installed now i'll go ahead and install that pump this is where we're going to cinch up that rear bracket and you're going to grab the thumb screws from corsair one little bit of a trick here is because that bracket floats if you have it laying down on your desk or table like i do you actually have to kind of pull it up from behind otherwise the thumb screw won't catch the thread so i did that here i'll go ahead and attach all four thumb screws with my fingers and thumbs and then i will pull out my screwdriver i want to make sure they're all set before i really start tightening them down and when i do tighten them down i'm going to go corner to corner to make sure that i equalize the pressure on the heat spreader the cpu so i don't go ahead and just tighten down one thumb screw all the way i'm going back and forth back and forth a little bit at a time another thing i want to mention here is that the lcd unit is actually modular you can pull it right off it's attached only via that small header and this is actually designed to be used with the older capelex models as well they have the same pump assembly that you can see underneath so you just slip this on and it's so easy to install that's done now it communicates with the pump and you're ready to go i'll post a link to these lcd displays in case you want to upgrade your existing capelix model to the elite lcd now in terms of the connections to the motherboard and the commander core module you have this proprietary cable that's going to go to the commander core you have a usb cable that will connect to an included usb 2 in one splitter and you also have this really important one pin connector now no good how-to video is complete without a mistake in it and here i'm connecting this one pin connector to the all in one header on my motherboard that is typically where you connect pumps and that's why you have an all-in-one header on most motherboards that is not going to work here it's going to lead to an error i will show you that later and i'll tell you how to fix it now in terms of the cables in the back yes there are a lot that's typical of rgb fans you have one controller cable one rgb cable for each fan and then you also have cables coming off the pump i showed you those in the front of the case earlier i've threaded those through the back i have the usb cable and the proprietary controller cable i'll now go ahead and connect that cable to the included commander node module there is a handy little white stripe here so you know that you're lining it up correctly i'll go ahead and attach it here and then i'll connect the rest of my cables for my fans and then my power supply as well it's actually quite easy to do and like i mentioned there's actually six connectors here on each side so you can control up to six fans my h150 model includes three fans so that means just three of the total six inputs are going to be used for the rgb and then the pwm control now here is that usb splitter i talked about earlier i have one side connected to my commander core and then i have to find my usb cable that i've threaded through from the front of the chassis that comes from the pump itself and i have to remember to connect it here as well so lots of cables a little bit of threading from one part of your chassis to the other make sure everything's in place and then i'll thread this back to the front of the chassis to connect it to my motherboard i'll show you where that connects a little bit later on next up is the power supply yes you do need to power up your commander core this has a sata connector that's typically used for sata drives like ssds and hard drives so i do have one of these sata connectors connected to my power supply if you're not running drives like this you might have to include this just for the commander core that's what i did here because i don't actually have any sata drive so that's the only purpose for the setup power now i have to attach the commander core to my chassis it includes some 3m double-sided tape and i'm going to actually attach it to the back of my ssd tray which i'm not using and that's going to go right here so once i have my tape in place i can actually just affix the commander core and it's ready to go here's that usb cable that i've threaded back into the front of the chassis and i need to connect it to a usb 2.0 header on my motherboard that's controlling both the pump and the commander core module via that two in one splitter and now i am done with my cables and it looks actually pretty clean this is one of the cleaner installations i've seen from corsair they've definitely cleaned up their cable routing and it's time to turn it on and what do we get a really cool display graphic and is it going to boot up hey the fan started spinning that's good i see liquid temp and oh an error sign so i've got a couple problems and as my motherboard reports it's detecting a cpu fan error remember how i mentioned that i connected that one pin connector to my all-in-one pump header you actually have to connect to the cpu fan header or your cpu will appear to be uncooled from the motherboard's perspective that's very scary so make sure you get that right next error i encountered was i had iq 3.0 or some version of 3.0 on my system it could not detect the new elite lcd header it just didn't know what it was and although i checked for an update it could not pull the new version 4. this is a little bit of a software issue for corsair they really should be able to pull this but i had to manually download iq4 from the corsair site and then that would overwrite the version 3 i had and everything was good to go so i q4 software is required to use the new elite lcd system once that's up and running it's going to tell you you have maybe a firmware update for your elite lcd and then you can go ahead and start programming the lighting and all the controls i actually found there were some new color schemes here and one that i really really liked was called watercolor it was really beautiful it really appealed to me and i've not seen it on previous coolers here you can see it in action i think this is a really beautiful look for rgb fans and again with corsair you get this kind of custom control but you can pick a lot of different colors you can go with a single color you can go through rotating colors lots and lots of options but there's more here there's an lcd screen and what do we see here we see the tbg logo this is really cool for anyone who wants a branded system it's really easy to do you just add your photo it can be a gif or a jpeg i'm going to pull it off my system here's the tpg logo i just position it so that it's centered and i'm ready to go and you could actually add any photo here's a photo of my daughter she got a lot of laughs out of this one the only thing that i wish corsair added was slideshow functionality that's not in there yet now most people are going to use this lcd display for system monitoring and there's a lot of functionality here a lot of customization here you see cpu load and temp and there's a lot of different graphical ways to display this so cpu load has like a dozen different ways graphically of demonstrating what's going on in your system so you don't just have to look at the number you can actually just briefly look at the color scheme or the graphic to get a sense of what your computer is doing and i really view this as corsair going above and beyond you know rgb has been a fad for a long time but this lcd display really takes it to the next level corsair has done a lot of artistry frankly in designing these graphical displays and i think people will find something that really appeals to among the many many options that corsair provides and beyond the lcd display you can get a lot of graphical readouts from iq itself so you can track the temp of just about anything using iq by default it tracks the coolant temp which i don't think is as useful as say tracking the cpu temp but you can change that easily you can also of course set your fans and your pump to different speeds there's a new variable speed option for the pump which is interesting so you can get the best of both worlds in terms of lower speed and lower volume at idle and higher speed higher noise levels at maximum load and for the fans you can actually set a custom fan curve so take a look at this from the factory the fans are set to ramp up pretty quickly that's typical of a lot of coolers but i don't think that's great i want my cooler quiet at idle so i'm going to set this custom fan curve and then i'm ready to go and it's quiet almost silent at idle so there you have it a brief intro to all the options that are available with the elite lcd from corsair it's a great cooler it performs well and it looks really really good the elite lcd is the complete package alright well that wraps up this how-to video if you have any questions definitely post them down below if you enjoyed the video please give me a like and subscribe and as always i'm ari from the tech buyers guru and i will catch you next time

Channel: The Tech Buyer's Guru

Views: 51,596

Keywords:

Id: vgtiMjCueMY

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2022