Triad Elections

Faithful readers of these pages no doubt have viewed Intel's "Prescott" Pentium 4 catastrophe as a slowly unfolding train wreck....so it should come as no surprise that by perversely extending the Northwood P4's pipeline by over 50%, the Santa Clara chipmaker has created perhaps the worst dud in the history of microprocessors...Prescott's heat output is so prodigious that it gates clock speed ramping to no higher than Northwood's without the use of exotic cooling solutions and more costly VRM and socket implementations. Not only is Prescott the hottest consumer class microprocessor by far, but its thermal density, the ratio of total heat output per area of chip space, is scalded dog astronomic....This leaves Intel with a CPU that is much more complicated than the chip it replaces, produces much more heat, doesn't ramp as well under the same conditions, and is slower to boot...observers have been dumbfounded by Intel's perplexing design decisions...What would lead Intel down Prescott's sorry trail? The answer is clearly that Prescott was a marketing driven product piloted straight over a cliff. This was allowed to occur because Andy Grove's system of pitting opposing camps against each other often leads to the loudest surviving -- not the fittest...

variations thereof

In addition to those listed I wanted to include the original Little River Cascade which eventually became the Storm and then sold under Swiftech as the Storm G4. I requested this block and Swiftech politely declined, stating the Apogee GT and GTX were better options given the nominal temperature difference between the models. It wasn't long after my request the Storm had been discontinued. For those unfamiliar with what may soon be an extinct design, the following quote by the designer in PCLincs Forums best describes the Cascade (Storm) principle:

The block works by water entering the middle barb into a manifold cavity that distributes the water flow out to the jet tube entrances. The jet tubes accelerate the water to around 4x the entrance velocity. Water travels down each jet tubes and is pushed directly down the middle of a "cup" (one for each tube) drilled into the copper base-plate. The jets impinge on the base-plate, creating a highly efficient stagnation region of thermal transfer.

In the left thumbnail above mini-cups are machined into the base, each situated below a single water jet. In the right thumbnail the final evolution of Cascade which began as a triple barb design, as compared to the photo above, in which there are twin outlets. One wonders if the choice to eliminate one of the returns on the Cascade was an ergonomic choice, as the removal of the second outlet eliminates bi-lateral return flow. If imitation is a form of flattery the Ketchak Multijet seen below built by Ketchak of DevilMaster.org is a testament to Cascade. Ketchak has modified the mini-jet pattern arranging two semi-circles. This seems to be a better choice for multi-core processors. Unfortunately no one is mass producing these beauties.



The most anticipated version of Cathar's Storm was reincarnated in the house of Swiftech as we mentioned above. The Storm G4 was improved upon by its maker and sold under Swiftech name. Seen below in a photo bowered from a PC Modding Mayalsia review.



Primarily constructed of Derlin, Storm G4 used molded mini-jets in Derlin and a fairly unconventional copper base in which the cups are machined. The center mass of base looks to be about 5mm which the edges are at the typical 3mm thickness. (Photo from PC Modding Malaysia)



Perhaps the most unique water block in our round-up and one whose design has not changed since its inception in 2003 is Danger Den's Copper TDX. The block employs what Danger Den describes as wave channels and heat voids; the latter are essentially pseudo mini-cups formed between the wave channels. Ultimately they are intended to reproduce the exact same end result as a micro-jet impingement / cup design, turbulence at the point of impingement. Briefly, turbulence within these "cups" exposes more water molecules to the heat transfer process as it is conducted up through the copper base.



There are many water-blocks on the market and while the Extruded Pin design is overwhelmingly the design of choice it it not necessarily due to its superiority. Indeed the reason I devoted so much bandwidth to explain the design, is its superiority to all others in a single CPU water block loop. As Swiftech is (was) the only water-block maker to offer both the Storm and the Apogee, they are the authority on performance per price comparison for these designs. Their reasoning behind the discontinuation of the Storm G4 is an archetypical example of diminishing returns as it affects a manufacturer, and is purely economical. The PR answer is to claim the performance gap between extruded pin and micro-jet has closed. The problem with this explanation is the ambiguity in the data which supports such a claim. Let’s hope we still find manufacturers bold enough to market products such as the graphic card cooler below.



Ketchak's latest Evolution of a Speices waterblock for nVidia 8800 videocard is based on his original Octopus design. For more examples examples of Ketchak's work visit the following links; CPU Waterblocks and Video and Chipset Blocks.

Onto our contenders jockeying for the first place in the Triad Elections..

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Quick Page Jump: 1 - Introduction2 - Koolance CPU3303 - Danger Den Copper TDX4 - D-Tek Fuzion5 - Swiftech Apogee GT6 - Swiftech Apogee GTX7 - EnzoTech Sapphire SCW-18 - Test Platform Danger Den NVIDIA 41019 - Methodology, Results / Epilogue10 - Back Plate Results / Conclusion

More reviews in this category can be found below:

Swiftech Apogee XT High End CPU Water Block Review

Larkooler Universal High Performance Complete CPU / VGA / Chipset / Mosfet Liquid Cooling Kit Review

Intel Core i7 CPU Water Block Roundup October 2009

Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU Water-Cooling Kit Review

Intel Core i7 CPU Water Block Roundup May 2009

Mushkin Does Liquid Cooling! eXtreme Performance Liquid Tested

Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultima Water-Cooling Kit Review

Xirex Liquid Cooling Starter Set Review

Xirex 4mm Thick Water Block Tested for Geforce 8800 GT

EK Supreme and Koolance CPU-340 Compared to The Competition