Corsair has been known for ages for its excellent PC accessories and PC components. The manufacturer had specialized in cooling over the last years in PC water cooling systems. All the more surprising the release of the now released A500 CPU cooler. With a manufacturer like Corsair you can be sure that this is not a 08/15 cooler. Reason enough for us to take a closer look at the A500.

Thoughtful design of the A500

CPU coolers are a dime a dozen these days. Real innovations can hardly be expected here anymore. But there is still room for improvement in quality and functionality. This is probably what Corsair thought and started to develop the A500 CPU cooler.

At first glance, the Corsair A500 looks pretty massive and like a real block. But the design was necessary to combine outstanding cooling performance with low noise.

Eight headpipes conduct the heat to the extremely large cooling surface. Two Corsair ML120 fans are mounted there, which are known to be particularly effective.

Corsair has come up with a clever system for mounting the fans. Normally the fans have to be unscrewed for the installation of the cooler and then laboriously screwed back on. But in the A500 from Corsair, the fans are only plugged into a rail system. So you only push the fans into the heatsink from above.

The rail system is also particularly uncoupled from the remaining fan. This ensures a particularly quiet CPU cooler.

Easy installation and extensive compatibility

Not only the installation of the fans is super easy with the A500. Also the CPU heat sink is very easy to install. Corsair has already included the very good XTM 50 thermal compound.

The screws, for mounting on the socket, can be easily reached from above. To do so, simply remove the upper cover of the cooler. This is held only by magnets, so that no additional screws are necessary. We wish that every manufacturer would think like this.

With a long (and included) screwdriver you can now reach the fixing screws. Afterwards you simply put the cover back on and push the fans into position.

By the way, the fans are positioned so that they leave enough space for standard RAM modules. This worked perfectly in our tests.

If you have higher RAM modules, for example with LED lighting, you can simply lock the fans in a higher position. So it should also be compatible with every possible combination.

Corsair A500 noise emission test

For the test we installed the Corsair A500 on an Intel i7 9900k. There, it could convince with an outstanding cooling performance, which almost comes close to a water cooling.

We also measured the noise development. We only reached 27 dB in idle here. Under full load, the CPU cooler’s fans went to a maximum of 49 dB. This is a bit louder than our reference system with the Noctua NH-D15, but the cooling performance is also much better.

In our opinion, the A500 is the perfect CPU cooler if you want to overclock your system but still manage without water cooling.

Conclusion on the Corsair A500

With the A500, Corsair has made a great leap towards powerful yet quiet CPU coolers. The installation is very easy and you don’t have to do without sufficient cooling. If you want to save yourself the expense of a water cooling system, you can take it without hesitation.

For us it is the best CPU cooler of the last years.