Introduction

It used to be that when someone mentioned the name Corsair, most people would think of memory as the only product that they were well known for. Over time thy branched out a bit and started delivering a quality built power supply and they're still a leader in that respect. Fast forward to more recent times and we find Corsair is developing products in both cases and CPU cooling. With cases like the Obsidian Series cases and the Hydro series CPU coolers, Corsair has kicked down doors releasing new products to give users an almost complete Corsair solution for everything but the motherboard, CPU and expansion cards; otherwise you can one stop shop for most of the rest of the major components.

As if things weren't doing well enough with all the latest products to hit the shelves, I was given the opportunity to look at the smaller of two of the new air cooling solutions that Corsair is bringing to its loyal customers. I mentioned this is the smaller of the two, and it is just that, and soon you will be reading about the bigger brother as well. The version we are looking at today is based on three 8mm heatpipes making direct contact with the processor. Heat is then carried into the aluminum fins to allow the included 120mm fan to rid this cooler of the heat incurred when overclocking, or just cooling in the summer months.

Today, we are going to take a look at Corsair's Air Series A50 Performance CPU cooler. Now, Corsair plays the cooler down a bit with info on the site stating that this is a good factory replacement cooler for i5 and i7 processors. In reality this is more than just a factory replacement. The A50 will drastically drop temperatures compared to the stock coolers, and offers headroom for overclocking. I say let's let the numbers tell the story of what the A50 brings to the table.