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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VGA block

VGA block

Looks

This one definitely looks special. Basically this block has much in common with a normal water block, but for the installation, there’s a big "fin" installed. And through this fin there are two holes, which match with the mounting holes on the video card.
There are some notches on the fin, but these can also be found on the block itself on the same side, so I think the Belgian Mail wasn't very carefully with my package...

Its one great looking block, can't deny that.

Installation

Just like the CPU block there are bolts, nuts, springs ... supplied with this block. And the installation is pretty much the same.

Temperatures

Geforce FX 5900 XT ([M]adshrimps review), great card, hot card...
The default cooler is silent, in 2D mode, but when starting a game the 3D mode kicks in the fan starts spinning faster and this video card becomes noticeably louder quickly!

It's of course logical that water cooling will do better, but by how much?

I monitored the temperatures just after boot-up, for the idle temperatures and recorded the maximum temperature reached after looping Nature test (3D mark 2001 Se) for over an hour
.
Don't forget, running this test also stressed the CPU, which heats up the water as I was using the VGA,Chipset and CPU at the same time. The only change in my water cooling system layout was the radiator, Waterchill’s Black Ice Pro was swapped for the “Watercool HTF2-Dual Fan”


  Temps @ Idle
Temps @ Load
Stock Cooling 36 56
Water Cooling 26 34


More then 20° C difference under full load! Impressive.


Package:

Madshrimps (c)

Shiny base:

Madshrimps (c)

Madshrimps (c)

All the parts needed for installation:

Madshrimps (c)

I think the Belgian Post dropped my package, a couple of times...

Madshrimps (c)

And finally, installed !

Madshrimps (c)


Three great blocks tested -> time for a conclusion.
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