Home-made CPU-,GPU-,Chipset water blocks tested

Cooling/Water Cooling by piotke @ 2004-01-28

Watercooling your entire system, something only for the rich ? Wrong! Buying cheaper blocks means crappy performance ? Wrong again! I received some home made water-blocks, for VGA, CPU and Chipset, to see how they stack up against retail water-cooling solutions. Now these blocks are going into mass production: low priced, good performing water-cooling for everyone? Let?s find out

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Introduction

The entire story ....

Some time ago there was an amino check on a Dutch forum. Somebody made some water blocks and wanted to know whether there were people interested in buying it. Lots of people gave a positive response, including some of our Madshrimps crewmembers. Cees send us over samples of his blocks right away!

They looked good, copper base and plexi top, but there were some problems with the materials used, the plexi started to break from the moment there was a little bit too much pressure on them. Not that good.

Madshrimps (c)Madshrimps (c)


But now he's back, and how! This new series of blocks is made totally of copper, and that won't break easily :)

We received a Socket 478 Block, Intel chipset block and a Geforce 4 / FX block. Time to put it the test.

I will review this block in three ways, if possible.

  • First I'll take a closer look at the block, how does it look and how the finishing. A block should be good performing, but in my opinion that doesn't mean that it has to be butt-ugly.
  • Installation, plug and play ? Or lose an entire day on installation?
  • And performance, probably the most important part. I'll monitor the temperature of the CPU and the video card. I'll pass the chipset, because my motherboard’s northbridge didn't have a built-in sensor.


    Madshrimps (c)

    Madshrimps (c)


    Let's start with the most used type of water blocks: the CPU block.
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