Corsair Interview – Michael Hooper (PM for Cases, Cooling and Fans)

bit-tech: Could you give some predictions about where you think the case market is heading over the next three years?

Michael: Lighting will become a central focus. Everybody's going to have lighting. If your case doesn't have some sort of integrated lighting it's not going to be really well received. Most of that is driven by the Asian market and the modder market. The standard PC builder is no longer somebody who'd even consider buying a Dell or a HP. This person is going to buy it from a system integrator who's going to give them a gaming machine. Gaming is the only part of our industry that's growing, so you'll see a lot more gamer focus and along with that comes a bit of baggage that goes with loud looks, flashy designs and lots of lighting.

bit-tech: A few questions about cooling. The H80i V2 and H100i V2 are essentially the same as the GT and GTX versions respectively, right?

Michael: They are identical except for one small difference. When Skylake came out, motherboard manufacturers started putting components like VRMs and capacitors as close to the socket as possible on mini-ITX motherboards and we had to re-release the coolers to not interfere with those components. It only occurred on mini-ITX motherboards and we had zero customer complaints but through our own testing we found you would get contact with the CPU, just not even contact. We wanted to prevent any user from ever having to experience that.

bit-tech: Does Corsair have plans to move into custom liquid-cooling? Or even modular AIO coolers?

Michael: We've been looking at that for some time and the biggest problem is reliability. We really can't guarantee any sort of reliability with that sort of product and a Corsair hallmark is we like to provide five-year warranties and excellent customer service. It's not that we haven't thought about it and haven't been working on it, it's that it's very difficult for us to do in a manner that Corsair would be satisfied with. There are so many variables – we can't dictate what type of coolant or aftermarket hoses they're going to be using.



bit-tech: Will you at least be including better case support for custom water-cooling gear like pumps and reservoirs?

Michael: Yeah, we understand we’re not the only liquid-cooling game in town so you should be able to look forward to seeing more custom loop cooling compatibility.

bit-tech: Some forum members raised concerns about product quality, especially with regards to fans and in particular the LED ones – any response?

Michael: The LED versions are currently cheaper. We can't provide a higher quality fan at a lower price while adding more features at the same time. We do know there are lots of issues with our fans like for the SP Series the rubber corners come off if they're screwed down too tight. We've rolled in changes for those that we haven't announced to anybody just because we messed up the first time around and we're just going to fix it really quietly. But we do know that we are lacking in terms of the overall quality of our fans and we're looking to remedy that this year with much more thought put into those fans than was previously. When we started fans three years ago it was more of a, 'let's just sell fans – we already have fans in our cases' business opportunity but now we have engineers actually thinking about the fans themselves and what they do and how they perform and their interaction with all the rest of our components.

bit-tech: And the last question: does Harry Butler still wear shorts to work every day?

Michael: Yes. And he takes off his shoes and walks around the office in socks.

bit-tech: Some things will never change. Michael, it's been a real pleasure to speak with you, and thank you for your time.

Michael: Thanks for reaching out.

bit-tech: Great, I look forward to catching up and seeing what Corsair has to show at Computex!

We'd like to extend our thanks again to Corsair and to Michael for his time, as well as to all our readers who submitted questions.