Stren's Titan Water Block Roundup

[Conumdrum]

Skinnee had many coolers to test on one GPU, like Stren. The stress of mounting and remounting coolers finally killed the card. That's what Martin is saying.

Skinnee did EIGHT blocks with a minimum of 3 mounts for each block. Poor card........

http://skinneelabs.com/gtx480-full-cover-block-roundup/

[stren]

Hopefully EVGA actually pulls through. When I asked about sponsoring a watercooled 680 card, they pretty much told me to get lost...

Don't think they care about science or performance much, but if you build a piece of artwork..that's probably where they may have interest.

Crossing my fingers for you..hate to see you spend $1G on a card to do all that work and end up like Skinnee with a dead card.

Martin: imho the more modern card is, the more it has circuitry and firmware features related to more advanced throttling and less chance to kill card. It's only temp wise though, and does nothing for many many remounts of cooling sys/it's durability, plus also limits overclock for those more insane (xtreme!) from us

Skinnee had many coolers to test on one GPU, like Stren. The stress of mounting and remounting coolers finally killed the card. That's what Martin is saying.

Skinnee did EIGHT blocks with a minimum of 3 mounts for each block. Poor card........

http://skinneelabs.com/gtx480-full-cover-block-roundup/

Yeah we'll have to see - the 480 was a high power card. If I do end up buying one I'll be buying an EVGA card with warranty so that mounting a waterblock doesn't invalidate the warranty. Hopefully that will protect me. Eitherway if I buy one or if I loan one it's still bad if it dies. I'd like the EVGA thing to be a long term relationship, which I doubt it will be if I kill a 1K GPU lol. Watercool is shipping out on monday, EVGA were supposed to ship the block on wednesday but I haven't had any confirmation yet. They're sounding a bit wishy washy as to when the card will ship. Hopefully they don't flake out on me. Eitherway this review will happen because sponsor's have already trusted me with blocks, but I wouldn't have proceeded if EVGA hadn't agreed to the loaner :/ Hopefully they pull through, it's worth waiting a bit longer to find out.

[stren]

Hydrocopper block arrived last night. Work's crazy busy right now so I probably won't have time to post pics and make an unboxing video for a little while.

[Shoggy]

For those who wait for the backplate. First real live photos:





Will be available in the shop very soon

[Church]

Shoggy: do you have plans of releasing future card backplates to which heatpipe module of this can be bolted to or it's one off and will be incompatible with future backplates?

[Shoggy]

We are not able to tell since that will also depend on the graphics card.

[Church]

Shouldn't it require just 4 extra threaded holes at specific locations relative to inlets for all the next backplates, not relative to distance from card's end? About the only reason that might strike out this option imho is making inlets spaced at different distance from each other, then for these blocks, but i'm guessing there is nothing to gain so probably there won't be such problem.

[Equinediver]

It looks awesome, Titan arrived yesterday so just waiting for the backplate to be up on your store.

[Martinm210]

For those who wait for the backplate. First real live photos:





Will be available in the shop very soon

Looks killer.

Any test numbers to suggest how much the backplate actually cools?

[Shoggy]

Any test numbers to suggest how much the backplate actually cools?

I have no numbers available. So far we only did a quick test to check if the heatpipe transports heat and it does

Today the card have met his new friends:

[Goatsongoats]

Drool...

Is this backplate/style of block going to continue for high end cards Shoggy?

[Shoggy]

Yes, that should also be available for other high end cards in the future.

[stren]

Nice. Maybe I should get one of those "laser" temperature guns to see if I can measure it. I do wish I had this block rather than the copper version, it's really pretty.

[stren]

I gave up on EVGA loaning me a card so I sold my 580s and bought a titan:



I upgraded the bios to avoid throttling and increased the power limit of the card so that I could try and seperate the results from the error as much as possible. I'm running Naennon's 145% Max Power bios. My max clocks were around 1150-1175 @1.212V (not the best card), so I downclocked to 1123MHz and tried a few benchmarks/stress tests to see what power levels I could get. Furmark was giving me a nice solid 120% level so I decided to go with that. I'm logging card temps with precision-x and the water/ambient temps with WinTest. I took some baseline measurements on air, with the fan at max (85%) the card was running about 50C over ambient which is not bad at all even if the fan is super noisy. First block on the testing rig is EK:



I also had time to unbox the hydrocopper card. The packaging is much less fancy than the Titan:





The only block to include the metal bracket to go around the gpu processor.



Accessories:



2 Pairs of compressions and 2 stop fittings:



The matt block contrasts with the shine of the EVGA insert:



I feel like the shiny insert takes away from the classyness. I would have preferred it to be cut out of the plastic just like the swiftech logo is:



Maybe even make it consistent with the style of the top that lights up some text there too:



The base is chrome (not nickel) plated:



And it's kind of nice that they preattach the thermal pads for you:



That's it for now, hopefully I'll have some of the first few results soon

[Martinm210]

Glad you hooked yourself up with the card, she's a beauty! My 570 is jealous...

[naennon]

waiting for results

also check pn stren

[shazza]

Wow - what a contribution to make to your testing - thank you, that was very generous of you.

[stren]

First result from EK, one run only with MX2:



Trendline is set to log style, not sure if this is the right choice, but it seems that higher flow would give exponentially less gains. ~7C at high flow seems pretty darn impressive. I don't think anyone really runs there though and I think most will be interested in ~1gpm for single card owners ~0.5gpm for two card owners and ~0.35gpm for three card owners. Although I could push lower than 0.35GPM, that's where my flow meter limits.

Also some more pics of mounted blocks:





Instructions were lacking so I used the plastic washers on the screws rather than between the board and the block/backplate.



Backplate has some cutouts for fittings:

[LeoAndrade]

That's a very nice result... waiting for the others!

[Martinm210]

Nice!

Might also do a "pumping power" on the x-axis, that way you account for restriction in the result. I like seeing both formats, but if you do have highly varying restriction between different blocks the higher restriction blocks "appear" to do better in a "flow rate" x-axis variable chart.

Awesome work as usual. Is there anything on the VRM temps you can capture too? I don't know too much about the card, but I know some blocks are better at VRM cooling than others independently of GPU temp.

[stren]

Nice!

Might also do a "pumping power" on the x-axis, that way you account for restriction in the result. I like seeing both formats, but if you do have highly varying restriction between different blocks the higher restriction blocks "appear" to do better in a "flow rate" x-axis variable chart.

Awesome work as usual. Is there anything on the VRM temps you can capture too? I don't know too much about the card, but I know some blocks are better at VRM cooling than others independently of GPU temp.

Yup I'll be doing that as soon as I have a second block done to compare That one becomes less important once you start talking about 3 cards in parallel I think because the restriction might be low enough that every block has similar flow. Possibly. Lol. Eitherway I'll plot both and people can make up their minds how to read it.

I took a look at the VRMs, I could have squeezed in a sensor right at the edge of the block but the sensor would have been almost touching the block and basically measuring the board/resistors near the VRM. It seemed more likely that I'd end up measuring the block so I figured maybe I should just measure the temps of the back of the board manually with the IR meter.

For anyone concerned about memory temps the hottest VRAM on the back of the board with no backplate is ~20C over ambient.

[LeoAndrade]

only 20C? Any chance of you testing a universal block on this card?

[Martinm210]

wow, only 20c. Seems like they run cool enough that you wouldn't need a heat spreader or anything back there. IR should work..look forward to your additional results..

[dernettemann]

wo looks nice

[Vetalar]

Nice results here! As an ati fan i'm not going to buy titan but good wb testing is my soft spot :-) also any universal block would be nice...

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