corsair icue h150i elite capellix lcd display factory

FeaturesA premium all-in-one CPU cooler that combines powerful, low-noise cooling and vibrant RGB lighting with a personalized LCD display, offering custom graphics to accent your system"s aesthetics and track its real-time performance at a glance.

Showcase your live CPU temperature, favorite animated GIF, funniest meme, your team"s logo, or anything you like on a custom 2.1" IPS LCD screen with 480x480 resolution, ultra-bright 600cd/m2 backlight, 24-bit true color depth, and over 16.7 million colors.

Three all-new 120mm CORSAIR ML RGB ELITE magnetic levitation fans with eight RGB LEDs per fan and AirGuide technology channel airflow for extreme CPU cooling performance.

CORSAIR iCUE software enables you to switch between a variety of display options such as fan speeds, CPU temps, images and GIFs, and more, adjust fan and pump speeds, and control and synchronize RGB lighting with all iCUE-compatible devices.

Corsair knows a thing or two about making decent all-in-one liquid CPU coolers and the company has launched a new range of iCUE Elite LCD solutions for Intel and AMD processors. Available as the Corsair H100i Elite LCD, H150i Elite LCD, and H170i Elite LCD, today we"re taking a look at the H150i Elite LCD.

Each CPU cooler comes rocking a 2-inch IPS display that can display temperature readings and more. Corsair bundles the latest ML RGB Elite fans (in 120mm and 140mm flavors), creating quite the compelling range of coolers to go up against heated competition from NZXT, ASUS, and other manufacturers.

Starting from $260 for the Corsair H100i Elite LCD, these aren"t affordable solutions to cool your processor. Is the Corsair H150i Elite LCD worthy of a spot in our best CPU coolers collection?

Bottom line: Corsair"s H150i Elite LCD may be seriously expensive, but this AIO cooler is capable of handling even enthusiast-grade processors without breaking a sweat.

Prices for the Corsair iCUE Elite LCD AIO coolers start from $250 for the 240mm H100i Elite LCD. The H150i Elite LCD we"re reviewing today costs $280-290, which is a substantial amount of money for a CPU cooler, even if it"s an AIO with a 360mm radiator and three premium 120mm fans.

There has always been a premium feel for enjoying the luxury of all-in-one liquid cooling performance compared to air coolers. Corsair"s range isn"t priced out of the competition either. When the 360mm NZXT Kraken Z73 originally launched, it was priced at $280. Corsair does offer some advantages with an IPS display and high-end fans.

Corsair includes everything you"ll require to get up and running, including the pump/radiator, three 120mm ML Elite fans, iCUE COMMANDER CORE RGB and fan controller hub, and a bag of mounting accessories. The iCUE COMMANDER CORE is one powerful hub alone, allowing you to hook up to six RGB channels and fans.Corsair"s iCUE H150i Elite LCD AIO looks the part with its gorgeous IPS display.

It"s possible to connect the three ML Elite fans to your motherboard to let it handle curves and the like, but I"d recommend using the iCUE COMMANDER CORE since you"re going to want to install and use the software to manage the IPS display. If you"ve installed and used an AIO cooler before, you"ll know precisely how everything works with the H150i Elite LCD.

Corsair includes mounting accessories for Intel and AMD (including Threadripper) processors. The fans can be attached to the radiator on either side, depending on how you plan to install the AIO inside the best PC case. Interestingly, the plastic shroud with the IPS display can be detached from the main water block to make installation easier.

The Corsair H150i Elite LCD is more than enough for the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X as the chart below shows, making it overkill for a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 processor. You could get away with the smaller H100i Elite LCD for anything below an Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 CPU. A temperature reading of 56 C on an overclocked Ryzen 9 5950X is a solid score.

The pump is silent in both silent and balanced modes, though you will notice some whine when pushing it to full speed. The same goes for the three ML Elite fans that are fairly quiet until you really ramp up the system load on the CPU. When joined by a few more case fans, you"ll not endure any additional noise with a good pair of headphones on.

This is one expensive piece of tech. Corsair threw a lot into the H150 Elite LCD box, including premium ML Elite fans and a fan/RGB controller hub. The pump and fans are excellent in keeping powerful processors cooled, but you"ll want to mess around with the various settings using iCUE software to really make the most of this AIO cooler.

There are numerous liquid coolers available for both Intel and AMD processors. Displays are becoming a more common sight on water blocks too. Corsair has always produced some of the best fans on the market and pairing them up with a radiator and reliable pump is a sure way of creating a powerful AIO cooler.

A close contender for the Corsair Elite LCD series is the Kraken range from NZXT. If you"re after a white AIO cooler, NZXT may have just what you"re searching for, but both solutions are extremely good with the latest processors. The decision largely boils down to personal tastes in design and how much you"re willing to spend.

Whether you should buy the Corsair H150i Elite LCD depends on a few things. Firstly, you need to be comfortable spending $300 on a CPU cooler. Then you need to have a powerful enough processor to take advantage of the 360mm radiator and thermal cooling capacity. Finally, you need to be running an OS that supports Corsair"s iCUE software to manage the IPS display.

While it"s only available in black, the H150i Elite LCD is gorgeous. The 2-inch IPS display is great for displaying temperatures or animated images. The three included 120mm ML Elite fans are incredible too. They"re capable of pushing volumes of air through the radiator and the latest pump from Corsair is quiet yet powerful.

Whether you"re using an overclocked Intel Core i5-12600K or AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, you"re going to have an easy time keeping the processor cooled. Playing games or running synthetic benchmarks and stress tests, the Corsair H150i Elite LCD is more than happy to keep temperatures low enough without making too much noise.

Bottom line: In terms of performance alone, the Corsair H150i Elite LCD is an incredible piece of kit. It will happily keep an overclocked Intel Core i5-12600K or AMD Ryzen 9 5950X cool enough under load.

CORSAIR launched their new AIO Liquid CPU Coolers a few weeks before the Intel Alder Lake launch because they know very well that the new processors from Team Blue run quite hot. Whether CORSAIR has incorporated any new design changes to better handle Alder Lake’s high temps remains to be seen. The new CORSAIR iCUE ELITE LCD Liquid CPU Cooler seems to be a minor upgrade over the their iCUE ELITE CAPELLIX Liquid CPU cooler that were launched last september. We decided to check out the 360mm variant i.e. the CORSAIR “H150i” iCUE ELITE LCD Liquid CPU Cooler to see what all has changed. CORSAIR also has the H100i 240mm and H170i 420mm variants available with the new LCD displays.

CORSAIR isn’t the first to put an LCD display on their coolers. ASUS showcased the Ryujin with an LCD display in 2018 and we’ve seen brands such as NZXT come out with displays on coolers of late.

The CORSAIR H150i iCUE ELITE LCD comes in a standard black and yellow Corsair box with all necessary accessories to fit all modern CPU sockets. The Intel bracket is pre-installed on the cooler and support LGA1700/1200/1156/1155/1151/1150 sockets. And as for AMD, you get AM4/STR4/STR4X brackets and mounting hardware.

The fans included with the CORSAIR H150i iCUE ELITE LCD Liquid CPU Cooler are the 120 mm ML RGB ELITE fans which use Magnetic Levitation bearing and provide between 14.86 to 58.1 CFM while running between 450-2000 RPM. These are static pressure fans meant to be used with dense radiators. Each fan has a 4-pin PWM connector for powering the fans and a 4-pin RGB connector.

To control the LCD display and all the RGB on the fans, CORSAIR includes a COMMANDER CORE with the cooler. This thing can handle six fans and six RGB devices aside from the LCD display on the cooler. And if you happen to have six RGB fans, then that’s all it can handle. A proper mid-tower cabinet such as the 680X will come with a few RGB fans of its own, so that along with the three ML RGB ELITE will be easily handled by the COMMANDER CORE.

You also get a USB Y-splitter cable for connecting two USB connectors into one USB 2.0 header on the motherboard. This does not always work since some boards will make it difficult to recognise devices if passed via a USB hub. When we used the splitter cable with our test rig, neither the LCD display, nor the three ML RGB ELITE Fans connected via the COMMANDER CORE were recognised. We had to bypass the USB Y-splitter to let iCUE recognise the devices.

Then comes the COMMANDER CORE which controls all the fans, the RGB lighting on the fans and the pump. The CPU block has a thick flat cable that runs into the COMMANDER CORE which in turn is connected to a SATA power connector and a USB 2.0 connector. The CPU block also has a USB 2.0 connector. Both USB connectors need to be connected to the motherboard to let iCUE talk to the display on the pump and the COMMANDER CORE. Like we mentioned previously, we could not use the Y-splitter USB cable with the two devices and they had to be connected directly.

Corsair went with CoolIT for this particular model and because Corsair is such a huge customer, they do get to customise a lot more aspects of the AIO than other customers. In the case of the CORSAIR H150i iCUE ELITE LCD, they haven’t done much aside from attaching a display on top of the pump block. Let’s start with the radiator.

The radiator could have easily incorporated screw protectors or screw guards such as the ones that we see on the Corsair XR5 and XR7 radiators that are part of their Hydro X series. The OEMs are different since the XR5 and XR7 are made by Hardware Labs and the AIO comes from CoolIT. We’re pretty certain CoolIT gets it from some other OEM but it’s high-time that this simple design modification was incorporated by all AIO manufacturers.

The CPU water block comes pre-fitted with the LCD panel and metal brackets for mounting on Intel systems. The tubings are attached using plastic swivel fittings which have a metal crimp on the end to secure the tube onto it. All the cabling comes out from the top of the CPU water block which in this image is oriented sideways. And then you have the LCD display which is a 2.1-inch 24-bit colour IPS panel with a resolution of 480x480 pixels and a frame rate of 30 FPS. The backlight is bright at 600 Nits.

You can remove the LCD display quite easily and you’ll be left with this. There’s no connector to perform a direct attach to the pump block should you not want the LCD display.

Corsair mentions that the cold plate is 56 x 56 mm, ours came a millimeter short but that’s fine. The cold plate is secured in place with eight Philips screws and opening the cooler is quite easy. Although, not recommended unless you have some Glycol and distilled water mixture lying about to top it up.

On the underside of the cold plate we get to see the typical CoolIT design of micro-skived fins. Corsair states that they have 128 fins per inch in this design.

Lastly, we have the CORSAIR ML120 RGB ELITE fans which is the other major change with this launch. On the iCUE ELITE CAPELLIX AIO, we had the ML120 RGB fans with eight LEDs and the fan could run between 400-1600 RPM while pushing up to 47.3 CFM. It did so without making much noise at 25 dBA. On the other hand, the ML120 RGB ELITE features eight LEDs fitted in a slightly different housing with straight edges and it can run between 450-2000 RPM while pushing up to 58.10 CFM. It’s also noisier at 30.4 dBA max.

One of the important things about AIOs is to see if the micro-skived fins, which is where most of the heat exchange happens, align with the actual CPU die inside the IHS. Intel and AMD have different arrangements of the dies on the substrate and the performance of AIOs depends on how well they align with the actual dies. Intel has a massive monolithic die on the consumer processors whereas AMD has their chiplet designs which spread out the dies across the entire substrate. Since the H150i iCUE ELITE LCD cooler was launched around the Intel Alder Lake processor launch, we decided to see if that aligned well with the die.

The CORSAIR H150i iCUE ELITE LCD Liquid CPU cooler is a decent AIO for the new Alder Lake processors as long as you’re not crunching out prime numbers all the time. The LCD display is a nice change and CORSAIR has done a great job of polishing the entire iCUE interface and making it easy to control. The fans, on the other hand, are a little louder than before. Overall, the H150i iCUE ELITE is a nice addition to CORSAIR’s portfolio.

NOTE:When looking around and checking prices etc. please note there is many different versions of the Corsair iCUE H150i, such as no digital screen, no RGB lighting etc, to do a price comparison you should search for the exact same model which is - CW-9060062-WW

The CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE LCD Display Liquid CPU Cooler delivers powerful, customized cooling for your CPU, with a personalized LCD screen that displays GIFs, images, and system information. Three cutting-edge CORSAIR ML120 RGB ELITE PWM fans controllable between 450 - 2,000 RPM and 48 total RGB LEDs add extreme low-noise cooling performance and vibrant lighting effects. Connect to the included CORSAIR iCUE COMMANDER CORE and powerful CORSAIR iCUE software to orchestrate synchronized RGB lighting, adjust fan speeds, and enable Zero RPM mode on up to six fans. iCUE controls LCD screen customization, enabling you to choose between a diverse library of graphical themes. With a 360mm radiator, thermally optimized copper cold plate, and easy installation on the latest CPU brackets, the H150i ELITE LCD puts your CPU cooling on full display.

Combines powerful, low-noise cooling and vibrant RGB lighting with a personalized LCD display, offering custom graphics to accent your system’s aesthetics and track its real-time performance at a glance. Showcase your live CPU temperature, favorite animated GIF, funniest meme, your team’s logo, or anything you like on a custom 2.1” IPS LCD screen with 480x480 resolution, ultra-bright 600cd/m² backlight, 24-bit true color depth, and over 16.7 million colors.

The pump head provides powerful, low-noise cooling for your CPU, with a ring of 24 individually addressable RGB LEDs encircling the screen for even more vibrant lighting effects. A diverse library of colorful themes let you view vital system information in bold graphic display styles that suit your system and setup.

Three all-new 120mm CORSAIR ML RGB ELITE magnetic levitation fans with eight RGB LEDs per fan and AirGuide technology channel airflow for extreme CPU cooling performance. Incredible cooling fan performance is controllable via PWM, from 400 up to 1,600 RPM while in operation. The Zero RPM fan mode and Variable Pump Speed specialized cooling modes in iCUE keep noise to a minimum when your system is idle or under light loads.

Switch between display options such as fan speeds, CPU temps, images and GIFs, and more, adjust fan and pump speeds, and control and synchronize RGB lighting with all iCUE-compatible devices. A smart RGB lighting and fan speed controller gives you precise speed and lighting control over up to six RGB fans.

It’s IPS, it’s 600cd/m², and its 2.1” diagonal measurement gets us 480×480 pixels. We’re talking about the LCD screen of Corsair’s iCue H100i Elite LCD, and we’d might as well put it right out front that the worst we can say about this $260 complete kit is that its nominal price is $110 greater than Corsair’s iCue H100i Elite Capellix cooler-only kit, and $10 greater than the combination of the Elite Capellix cooler ($150) and CPU Cooler LCD Display Upgrade Kit ($100).

That $260 nominal price gets iCue H100i Elite LCD buyers a 2x120mm-fan radiator, a factory-attached water block with integrated pump and programmable LCD cover, two 120mm ARGB fans, mounting hardware for Intel’s LGA1700, 1200/115x and 2066/2011, additional mounting hardware for AMD’s AM4 and sTRX4/sTR4, a Corsair Commander Core with additional USB internal header splitter cable, and mounting hardware for the radiator/fans and pump.

As described above, the iCue H100i Elite LCD combines its pump and CPU water block into a single component, and caps that component with an LCD-faced cover. The CPU interface at the base of the unit is called a “cold plate”, and Corsair’s copper design uses split pathways with 128 fins per inch in contact with the water above. Corsair adds a blotch of silver thermal paste to the center of the cold plate’s bottom, thereby easing installation for builders who may not have a tube of thermal paste at hand.

Powered by an SATA header, the Commander Core is responsible for controlling up to six fans and six ARGB devices in addition to linking the pump unit and its LCD display.

We thought that the best way to show off a liquid cooler with a built in status display would be to pair it with a power supply that also has a status display. We recently tested such a machine, and replacing its cooler would be easy.

The point of having a programmable display on the top of the water block is that it allows users to put whatever image they want there, and for that you’ll need software. Corsair’s iCue software provides both lighting and fan control, with RGB configurable for both the fans and the lighted ring around its 480×480 IPS display.

While the default coolant temperature display isn’t very useful for system monitoring, users are welcomed to swap out the coolant temperature for something more urgent. We found “Dual Bar” to be the most useful of factory configurations, as it reads CPU temperature from the motherboard as well as coolant temperature from the pump.

The pump’s display is also able to show both static images and GIF animations. We added our own static image, and set the pump and fan speeds to their highest settings to produce the lowest possible temperatures.

Corsair iCue offers a very good selection of hardware readings from our build, though various motherboard brands and models will be more or less compliant with Corsair’s offering.

This reviewer picked the Celsius S24 years ago as a top-performing, easily-installed option for testing cases. The iCue H100i Elite LCD sacrifices installation ease for configurability, but that shouldn’t have any impact on performance. Both are installed above our motherboard’s passive voltage regulator to aid in motherboard cooling.

The short story is the that iCue H100i Elite LCD cools our CPU slightly better than the Celsius S24, but did a slightly lesser job of cooling our voltage regulator. The longer story is that we had to do extended testing to get these results, as Prime95 small-FFTs are not ideal for load testing the 3700X.

The iCue H100i Elite LCD may cool our CPU a couple degrees better, but it does so with a couple decibels more noise. Note that these are not noise levels for the complete system, but only for each cooler.

With tiny improvements in CPU temperature offsetting tiny increases in noise, most buyers won’t be choosing the iCue H100i Elite LCD for performance alone. That’s OK, because it offers a few features that we’re sure high-end builders are willing to pay for:

Corsair’s iCue H100i Elite LCD combines the features of its H100i Elite Capellix and Elite LCD upgrade kit, for $10 to $20 more than the contributed parts. For ease of installation, it might just be worth the difference.

When faced with the pricing conundrum that this LCD-inclusive model costs more than the combination of the base model and LCD upgrade, we went out on the web and found users whose weren’t able to complete the installation of the LCD upgrade to the cheaper non-LCD model. Given that little hiccup, it’s probably worthwhile for most builders to buy this entire configuration as a factory-completed kit, even if it does cost a little more.

The math is simple: People who own the $150 version of this cooler were already finding value in the $100 LCD upgrade. By nudging the price down to $250 or less, Corsair qualified the combined product for the same award. For those who want even more value, Corsair is offering free shipping through the end of July.

Released just in time for the launch of Intel’s 12th generation CPUs, Corsair’s H150i Elite LCD cooler is the first to come with the fixings for the new LGA Socket 1700.

Compatible with both Intel and AMD CPUs, Corsair’s new cooler is a big beasty. With three 120mm fans and a radiator almost 400mm long it takes up plenty of real estate in your case. It’s so big that I took the plunge and upgraded the test rig case to a Corsair 7000D Airflow with an almost cathedral-like interior space. But if you want to maximise your CPU cooling without going for a bespoke water-cooling solution one of these 360mm AIO coolers are your best bet.

For this test, I used an Asus TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WIFI motherboard paired with a top-of-the-range Intel Core i9-12900K. This was all installed within the aforementioned Corsair 7000D Airflow tower case.

The Corsair H150i Elite LCD is essentially the same tried and tested design at their H150i Elite Capellix liquid CPU cooler. They are so similar that the Capellix Socket 1700 upgrade kit fit the H150i Elite LCD review sample that was shipped to me without the standoffs for the new Intel 12th generation Core CPUs.

Opening the box and you are confronted with the huge radiator and RGB water block connected by two 380mm flexible hoses. There’s also a mess of cables, the Commander CORE RGB & PWM Fan Controller, and the three ML120 RGB ELITE PWM fans.

Fortunately, there are plenty of videos, including those on Corsair’s YouTube channel showing how to install the cooler. There’s a quick start guide that can be downloaded from the Corsair website. Also, once you’ve unpacked the box, the components look a lot less overwhelming.

Most cases state that they are compatible with 360mm AIO coolers. Be mindful that the 360mm refers to the 3x120mm fans, and that the H150i radiator is actually 397mm long. The radiator itself is 27mm thick with another 25mm for the fans. You may find yourself having to clear out your hard drive cages and removing your DVD drive to fit it all in.

The LCD is a separate unit, clipped onto the water block. This means that it can be removed and placed out of the way during installation. Also, if it develops a fault, it can be easily replaced.

I installed the fans as per Corsair’s recommendations to the underside of the radiator, exhausting air through it, up and out of the case. The Corsair 7000D Airflow case has three fans at the front blowing air in and one exhausting to the rear as standard. I prefer cases to be under positive pressure, so the installation of a couple more 120mm fans is on the cards. But, for now, at least it is not sucking dust in from the top.

The Corsair H150i Elite LCD uses Corsair’s universal iCue software for both RGB and LCD control, as well as system monitoring. The iCue software is free and downloadable from the Corsair website. The software also integrates with some other vendors’ equipment allowing synchronisation of RGB lighting displays. My Asus TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WIFI motherboard uses Asus’s proprietary Asus Aura RGB system, of which there is a plugin for enabling it to work with Corsair’s iCue software.

The iCue software has a dashboard displaying temperatures and fan speeds of all the PC’s main components, the CPU, GPU, and, of course, the cooler, itself. The software also allows fan speeds to be adjusted using either one of the default settings: quiet, balanced, extreme, zero, or variable. Alerts can be triggered if the coolant temperature gets hot, triggering RGB LEDs, fan speed and even a PC shutdown should the temperature cross a threshold.

There are many preconfigured RGB lighting designs that can be customised to taste. All the RGB components can be controlled by a single scene setting, synchronising them together, or set individually. The H150i Elite LCD screen can also be customised within the iCue software.

The display can be set to show data from one or two of the many sensors in the PC, such as coolant temperature, CPU package temperatures, GPU temperatures, and CPU load. There’s even a clock. There are a few preset screen displays that can be changed with the click of a button.

The LCD screen can also be customised with an animated gif, either from one of the included files or one of your own. I set up an Xbox gif with a pulsating green RGB display, jokingly branding my PC with Microsoft’s gaming ecosystem.

The Corsair ML120 RGB Elite fans run from 450 RPM to 2000 RPM and have an airflow of betweeen 14.86-58.10 CFM. Corsair states that each fan has a sound level of 10-30.4 dBA.  The fans during normal use are inaudible when set to balanced. Under load, they are a little bit louder. Set to the extreme setting, the fans are pretty loud, but I’ve heard louder.

Corsair H150i Elite LCD is the ultimate all-in-one cooler. There are bigger AIO coolers, but you’d be hard pushed to find a case larger enough to accommodate one. As a self-contained alternative to messing about with a bespoke liquid-cooling solution, you’ll likely not be able to do much better. What initially appears to be a confusing box of components turns out to be very easy to install, if you have the right case.

The CPU temperatures are kept in check and the fans are not too loud. The customisable RGB lighting sets things off nicely and the LCD screen on the water block adds something special to your PC build. All in all, the Corsair H150i Elite LCD is an easily recommended and very fancy cooling solution for AMD and Intel CPUs.