Sound Performance
At the zero RPM, quiet and Balanced at idle settings the H100i was almost inaudible so there are no recordings of those two settings. With a DB meter, the settings showed nothing above the ambient sound. You definitely will have no issues with sound interfering with gaming here.
Balenced setting at load.
At the balanced setting when under load the cooler became slightly louder but it still managed to stay quiet enough that any sound from a game or video would easily drown out any noise.
Extreme setting at idle.
Extreme setting at load.
At the extreme setting, the H100i starts sounding fairly loud even at idle but it never reaches a point where the sound can’t be drowned out by some headphones.
100% speed.
At 100% speed, the cooler sounds pretty loud but I am still able to cover it up during gameplay with some headphones on.
Overall sound performance is pretty good, at higher speeds the cooler does become fairly loud but once you put on a pair of headphones it can’t be heard. You can also use the iCue software to customize the fan speed so if silence is a priority you can easily keep the fans from spinning up to a point where the cooler is too loud.
I rate the sound performance 4/5. The cooler does get fairly loud at higher RPMs but Corsair gives you enough control to work around that with the various speed settings.
