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Xirex 4mm Thick Water Block Tested for Geforce 8800 GT

Cooling/Water Cooling by geoffrey @ 2008-08-14

NVIDIA had quite a success with their 8800 video card series; especially their 8800 GT based on the G92 core made its way into many PC configurations. Sadly the single slot reference cooler was not very quiet under load and high temperatures prevent any overclocking fun. Xirex launched their Stealth Full Cover water block which aims to bring excellent performance even with low noise water cooling configurations, let´s put it to the test!

Conclusive thoughts

Conclusive thoughts

From our results I think we can conclude that the XIREX stealth is a very decent performer. Overall it lowers the GPU die temperature with over 25°C compared to the reference heatsink, even the VF850 OEM heatsink made by Zalman gets a 12°C beating. And that's with our water-cooling unit used in silent mode, temps dropped another 4°C lower when we used our pump and fans at 12V. Together with the fact this is a full cover unit so all the hot running components are being treated well. The outcome is a bit surprising since this water block is just super flat, and installation went just great and very straight forward.

Do take into consideration that a real high-end air cooled VGA heatsink might score a lot closer than the VF850 and that those do not require as much maintenance as water-cooling blocks do, and of course there is always the risk of having leaks...

The XIREX Stealth block is perfect for having a cool and silent video card, maybe not as good as the dedicated GPU blocks but still competitive since it offers more components cooling.

The major downside is that this block comes at a rather high price and knowing that it is not compatible with future products makes it a very expensive choice. We found the Xirex Stealth at € 87,5 in a local shop, the version without aluminium cover plate comes at € 70 which is still quite high.

Madshrimps (c)

Let's sum it all up once again:

+ Good performance even with low noise water-cooling setup
+ Keeps the entire card cool (GPU as well as memory chips)
+ Easy to install
+ Looks good

- No fittings included
- Limited compatibility
- Just OK performance compared with high-end air cooled heatsinks
- Price: € 87,5

Madshrimps (c)

We would like to thank George from Xirex for sending us their review sample, we hope you enjoyed reading this review and I hope to see you soon back at Madshrimps!

Comment from geoffrey @ 2008/08/15

I received a response from one of our readers stating:

Quote:

In the article "Xirex 4mm Thick Water Block Tested for Geforce 8800 GT" you compared the water block against a Zalman VF-850 cooler. I can find no information on the web, or from Zalman about this video cooler.

With that in mind I can only assume this cooler does not exist and the performance data provided in this review is fictitious.

Just to make sure I don't get multiple request I will answer the question here in public.

The Zalman VF-850 is an OEM heatsink. You're correct, you won't find this unit on Zalman's site, however the VF-850 heatsink is the successor of the Zalman VF-830 which you can find on Zalman's site, have a look: http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/...ad.asp?idx=303

I have no detailed sight on what the exact differences are between the 830 and 850, just in case I've already provided links to the article in which we tested the Leadtek card which is from the manufactory out provided with this heatsink. There you can see to what heatsink we're comparing in this article.

I hope this may be of any help to any of you.

Comment from jmke @ 2008/08/15

what a ridiculous claim made by the author of that email, it just proves he didn't thoroughly read your review since he skipped the part where you linked to the Leadtek 8800 GT product review...

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