Best Corsair CPU coolers in 2023

Jun 19, 2023

Cool your powerful CPU with these top Corsair solutions.

Keeping your processor cool during use is incredibly important. These components are capable of producing a lot of waste heat that needs to be quickly removed so they can continue operating at rated speeds. Corsair is a popular PC brand that makes some of the best coolers in the business. We've rounded up the very best Corsair CPU coolers for your PC right here.

Our favorite Corsair CPU cooler

The Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE LCD XT is a 360mm all-in-one (AIO) CPU cooler with impressive thermal performance and plenty of features. If you have the available budget to spare, this will easily cool even an overclocked Intel Core i9 or AMD Ryzne 9 CPU.

Most people will require nothing more than a 240mm AIO as we recommend below, but the Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE LCD XT is our favorite CPU cooler from the company. It offers impressive thermal performance with a 360mm radiator and three new Corsair fans for maximum airflow. The three blowers have RGB lighting and the CPU block has an impressive LCD panel for displaying just about anything you'd desire. Just keep an eye on that price tag.

Corsair includes everything needed for installing this cooler atop an AMD or Intel processor with numerous sockets supported. The Corsair AF120 RGB ELITE PWM fans are excellent at forcing cool air through the 360mm radiator with a zero-fan mode when maximum cooling is not required. If you're building your dream PC and want one of the best AIO coolers around, look no further than this one from Corsair. It'll improve the aesthetics of your PC as well as keep everything cool.

For those with more compact PC cases

If you need good thermal performance in a reasonably compact package, you'll want to consider the Corsair iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX XT. We don't recommend AIO coolers with a 120mm radiator so this is as compact as we'd go.

We'd never recommend an AIO cooler with a 120mm or 140mm radiator. It's just not worth it compared to air coolers. 240mm radiators are perfectly fine for a PC build, however, making the Corsair iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX XT a worthwhile consideration if you're limited by the PC case. Not every chassis can hold a 360mm radiator, which is where this cooler comes into play. It has the same high-quality Corsair fans you'd find in larger coolers, as well as a bright CPU block with all the RGB lighting in the world, but at a more reasonable price.

Because you're only using two 120mm fans and have a smaller surface area than a 360mm radiator, we'd recommend against overclocking an Intel Core i9 or AMD Ryzen 9 CPU with this AIO. Everything else about this cooler is amazing, aside from it being a little pricey.

If you want the most bang for your buck

Not everyone needs RGB fans and an LCD for showing GIFs and other data. This is where the Corsair iCUE H150i RGB ELITE comes into play. There are a few lights on the CPU block, but that's about it. This thing focuses on being great at cooling your CPU.

Should you want the very best bang for your buck with Corsair's catalog of AIO coolers, we'd recommend the Corsair iCUE H150i RGB ELITE. It has minimal RGB lighting, no LCD panel, standard Corsair fans, and the same excellent performance you'd expect from an AIO cooler with a 360mm radiator. Because you cannot alter what's displayed on the CPU block, and there's very minimal RGB lighting elsewhere, Corsair was able to keep the price low, allowing those on tighter budgets access to higher-tier cooling solutions.

Whether you're rocking an Intel Core i9-13900K or AMD Ryen 9 7950X, the iCUE H150i RGB ELITE will be able to tame the CPU even under heavy loads. Because of the three fans, you may notice some additional noise at higher RPM speeds, but that's the nature of the beast when you're attempting to extract a lot of heat waste for a single location.

A beastly CPU cooler for overclocking

Bigger usually means better, which is why the Corsair iCUE H170i Elite LCD XT takes our spot for the best-performing AIO cooler from Corsair. It has a 420mm radiator with three 140mm fans for excellent thermal performance.

This is it, the big one. The Corsair iCUE H170i Elite LCD XT is the largest AIO cooler the company sells and it likely won't fit inside your PC case, unless you're using a full-tower chassis. We've compiled a list of the best full-tower PC cases if you want to go all-out with such a cooler. The radiator comes in at a whopping 420mm in length, which is far greater than the 360mm our top Corsair CPU cooler has. So long as you can fit this thing inside your PC, you're going to have a great time.

It's expensive, but for the money, you're getting three powerful 140mm fans, a high-quality water block pump, and some tasteful RGB lighting effects. Install Corsair's iCUE software and you'll have a cooler that can not only cool the best consumer-grade processor but also look the part.

Want to build your own CPU open-loop cooler? This kit is for you!

The Corsair Hydro X Series iCUE XH305i RGB PRO is a custom water-cooling kit, which means Corsair provides everything in a box and you need to fix and connect everything together. This kit includes a reservoir, fans, a radiator, a pump, fluid, fittings, and some tools to make it all work.

If you'd like to build your own open-loop water-cooling solution for your PC but don't want the hassle of picking all the parts, Corsair has a kit available that has everything you need to get started. The Corsair Hydro X Series iCUE XH305i RGB PRO sounds like a mouthful and it most certainly is. But this fancy kit is also incredibly capable once it's all installed and up and running. Inside the packaging are a 360mm radiator, three RGB Corsair fans, a pump/reservoir combo unit, a CPU block, rubes, fittings, and all the necessary tools.

This is essentially a barebones kit for building your own loops, including the means to cut the acrylic tubing. The only thing missing is a heat gun to warm up the tubes for bending, which will need to be bought separately. It's expensive, but custom water-cooling projects such as this typically cost far more than an AIO or air cooler. What you get in return is impressive thermal performance. The three 120mm Corsair fans will be able to blow plenty of cool air through the large radiator, and you'll have more than enough fluid to soak up all that processor waste heat.

For the times when you're removing the CPU cooler

The Corsair XTM50 is the easiest of them all when it comes to installation. You get a CPU stencil and a spreader included in the box, making it easier for you to install the paste.

Thermal paste is incredibly important and can be the difference between excellent performance and impressive thermal throttling. It's what plugs any gaps between the integrated heat spreader (IHS) on the processor and the plate on the cooler, be it a block or heatsink. The IHS transfers heat through the cooler using contact, so the more direct contact we have, the better the thermal transfer will be. Regardless of how advanced manufacturing has progressed, there will be defects in either the IHS or the cooler (or both).

There will be cuts, grooves, or other imperfections on a microscopic level that affect the process of transferring heat efficiently. This is where thermal paste comes into play. It acts as a transfer agent between the two metal surfaces, not only ensuring there's an even contact across the processor, but the paste will also help improve the thermal conductivity of the cooler. Most CPU coolers (including those we recommend in this guide) will come with thermal paste already applied, but it's always worth having a spare available.

Our top recommendation for the best Corsair CPU cooler would be the Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE LCD XT. This impressive 360mm radiator-sporting package offers impressive thermal performance at a reasonable price. It has all the RGB lighting you could ever ask for and even has a fancy high-quality LCD panel on the CPU block that can be used to show just about anything. If you want not only the best cooling performance but also a solution that looks good and will enhance your PC build, this would be our top pick.

Other recommendations from Corsair are worth considering here. The Corsair iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX XT is ideal for more compact PC builds where space is limited. It would fit inside smaller form factor cases without an issue, providing a much-needed uplift in thermal capacity. The Corsair Hydro X Series iCUE XH305i RGB PRO Custom Cooling Kit is just awesome if you want to go it alone and create your very own open-loop CPU water cooling solution.

Picking the right CPU cooler depends largely on the processor you intend to use it to ... well, cool. We've rounded up the very best CPUs (and most heat-producing) from AMD and Intel that will not only blow your existing benchmark scores out of the water but will also slash your energy bills, as you no longer require central heating during the winter months. Corsair found itself in our best AIO coolers collection and for good reason!

Our favorite Corsair CPU cooler

The Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE LCD XT is a 360mm all-in-one (AIO) CPU cooler with impressive thermal performance and plenty of features. If you have the available budget to spare, this will easily cool even an overclocked Intel Core i9 or AMD Ryzne 9 CPU.

Richard is a Senior Commerce Writer at Valnet and has been covering the technology industry for more than a decade. He's been building PCs and managing network infrastructure for just as long. When he's not creating content for Valnet, you can often find him inside a chassis somewhere.