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Swiftech and Danger Den Water Cooling for Geforce 8800 Series

Cooling/Water Cooling by geoffrey @ 2007-06-06

In this article we take an in-depth look at the advanced cooling options available for the Geforce 8800 series. Both Danger Den and Swiftech have water blocks designed to fit the latest NVIDIA high end cards, so we take them for a test ride, comparing performance at different pump speeds, SLI compatibility and see how they do compared to high end air cooling solutions. Read on to find out if water cooling a G80 based VGA card is worth it.

Danger Den NV-88GTS-PC: Install

Danger Den NV-88GTS-PC - Up Close & Install

The NV-88GTS-PC is a full cover block, once installed your card looks like this:

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Covering most hot spots on Geforce 8800 GTS cards, Danger Den is faced with quite complex CNC machining. The center area is drilled in so that the G80 GPU fits in perfectly, around that hole a second large area is covering the memory IC's. The parts sticking out at the right is used for keeping the NVIO chips at decent temperature, while on the left side we find the part which is cooling the power mosfets.

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The DD NV-88GTS-PC exists out of two parts held together by screws. The base plate is made out of copper and in contrary to its other side comes with a more basic kind of water block design:

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Two 1/2" fittings are being used to connect this water block with the rest of your water-cooling setup. In order to use those low profile water blocks in SLI you can change the direction those fittings are facing. This is a great feature if you ask me and will come in handy even if you don’t have SLI.

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The block is tightened to your VGA card with the use of small screws. Each screw has protection rings in order to avoid electrical shortage. It is also used to indicate mounting pressure, over tightening those screws will bend your vga card which will have a negative influence on the block's performance.

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The installation manual is small and simple, but certainly clear enough to get this block installed in just a few minutes. Installation itself went smooth; we didn't find any issues during our testing. The only thing we think that is missing here might be a tool to open up your water block. Although this voids your warranty it might be useful for people who like to clean the inside after long periods of active usage.

Comment from Kougar @ 2007/06/06

Great review! Very interesting to see Swiftech's block take the win there, I am surprised. Did overclocking improve beyond 600Mhz with either block though??

Comment from geoffrey @ 2007/06/07

Overclocking does indeed improve, DanderDen's block will give you about the same overclocking headroom as Thermalright's HR-03 Plus, as they are temps wise very close to eachother. http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=get...&articID=5 57

Swiftech's block will go even further, though due to the unusual clocking of the G80 it still might be hard to get it stable at the next available gpu clock (675MHz).

Comment from jmke @ 2007/06/07

Quote:

Originally Posted by geoffrey

they are close together at STOCK G80 speeds; but once you start overclocking, HR-03 PLus will heat up more & faster. Watercooling will take the lead quickly and with larger margins, also, it will allow you to use a higher VGPU/VMEM as it's better cooled, and can remove more watts

stock HR: 45°C
stock DD: 45°C

OC HR: 47°C
OC DD: 45°C

Comment from Cranox @ 2007/06/07

Nice review geoffrey , never tought that the mcw-60 is that good

Comment from jmke @ 2007/06/10

Quote:

The G80 adapter kit is used to replace the standard MCW60 hold-down plate and allows installation with GeForce™ 8 series Video Cards, as well as ATI® latest 2900XT video cards

http://www.swiftech.com/products/mcw60-R.asp

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