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Danger Den P4 RBX Power kit Review
Cooling/Water Cooling by jmke @ 2004-05-25
We install Danger Den?s high end water cooling kit, powered by the ever popular RBX water block and Danger Den?s own 12v pump, on our P4 test setup to see how it performs.
Installation & Testing
Installation
The installation guide is located at Danger Den’s website, a no nonsense descriptive step by step guide on how to get the water block installed. If you need an explanation on how to cut tubing and attach them to the fittings... you might not be making the best decision in the world by going into water-cooling.
A bit of screwing around (literally) with the included bolts and nuts and our P4 test motherboard is ready for installation.
After cutting the included tubing to lengths which were needed you slide them over the fittings and secure them with plastic clamps. Closing the clamps is quite easy, but removing them requires a bit more effort.
All hooked up
4 springs at each side divide the pressure on the CPU evenly; handy thumbscrews make tighten them down, Childs play!
We remounted the block several times and checked for changes in temperatures, there were all within a 1°C range.
everything installed, ready for testing
Before we hooked up the whole system we let it run overnight to check for leaks; none were found and we started up our tests rig.
Test results
Using K7 burn the CPU was put under load for minimum duration of 30 minutes after which the maximum temperature was noted down. MBM5 was used for reading the P4 temp diode. Room temperature was kept stable at 21°C during all tests.
We used different setting to balance between performance and silence; using a volt meter we set the output of the rheobus at 0-7-12v for the Evercool fan and 5-7-12v for the pump. By using the rheobus the actual voltage at maximum setting dropped to 11.2v instead of 12v.
In the graph below we have the different pump voltages in the 1st column and fan voltages in the 2nd.
The first thing which strikes as surprising is the lack of difference in load temperatures when changing the voltage of the pump. This is mainly due to the way our test system is set up. If you install the pump at the bottom of your maxi/midi case then you will notice a difference in temperatures when changing the speed of the pump.
The noise increase between running the fan at 12v versus 7v is not worth the rather small decrease in load temps. Completely disabling the fan makes the system run rather hot but nowhere near critical levels. The sweet spot for this setup seems to be 5v @ pump with 7v @ fan. Very low noise and excellent performance!
The installation guide is located at Danger Den’s website, a no nonsense descriptive step by step guide on how to get the water block installed. If you need an explanation on how to cut tubing and attach them to the fittings... you might not be making the best decision in the world by going into water-cooling.
A bit of screwing around (literally) with the included bolts and nuts and our P4 test motherboard is ready for installation.
After cutting the included tubing to lengths which were needed you slide them over the fittings and secure them with plastic clamps. Closing the clamps is quite easy, but removing them requires a bit more effort.
All hooked up
4 springs at each side divide the pressure on the CPU evenly; handy thumbscrews make tighten them down, Childs play!
We remounted the block several times and checked for changes in temperatures, there were all within a 1°C range.
everything installed, ready for testing
Before we hooked up the whole system we let it run overnight to check for leaks; none were found and we started up our tests rig.
Test results
JMke's Test Setup | |
| CPU | Intel P4 2.53 "B" @ 2750 Mhz – 1.66v vcore (~100 Watt) |
| Mainboard | Asus P4PE |
| Cooling | * DD RBX Power Kit |
| Memory | 1 * 512Mb PC3200 TwinMOS |
| Video | Matrox Millenium PCI |
Using K7 burn the CPU was put under load for minimum duration of 30 minutes after which the maximum temperature was noted down. MBM5 was used for reading the P4 temp diode. Room temperature was kept stable at 21°C during all tests.
We used different setting to balance between performance and silence; using a volt meter we set the output of the rheobus at 0-7-12v for the Evercool fan and 5-7-12v for the pump. By using the rheobus the actual voltage at maximum setting dropped to 11.2v instead of 12v.
In the graph below we have the different pump voltages in the 1st column and fan voltages in the 2nd.
The first thing which strikes as surprising is the lack of difference in load temperatures when changing the voltage of the pump. This is mainly due to the way our test system is set up. If you install the pump at the bottom of your maxi/midi case then you will notice a difference in temperatures when changing the speed of the pump.
The noise increase between running the fan at 12v versus 7v is not worth the rather small decrease in load temps. Completely disabling the fan makes the system run rather hot but nowhere near critical levels. The sweet spot for this setup seems to be 5v @ pump with 7v @ fan. Very low noise and excellent performance!
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