Revolutionary GPU Cooling - Alphacool NVXP Titan

[Aquatuning]

Today on my desk we have a VERY special beta samples from the house of Alphacool, From the outside you would think this is a normal run of the mill GPU cooler.

You would be wrong...





The card uses a polished stainless steel top and acetal body with copper inserts directly on the heat spots. Not only does this offer great performance from the new patented technology but the best part is the end user RRP of around ?70 ($90) around ?20 ($25) cheaper then any other block on the market

Reviews will start to appear shortly

[Nobodi]

nice idea but leaves potential for a lot of places to leak

[Vetalar]

interesting design here!
next step is "modular" design universal "core" part and replaceble vrm+vram parts...

[El Mano]

Sure thing Titan users are concerned about saving a couple bucks.
Oh dear.

[Aquatuning]

nice idea but leaves potential for a lot of places to leak

I can assure you they thought of that - they are all very well sealed.

interesting design here!
next step is "modular" design universal "core" part and replaceble vrm+vram parts...

Alphacool already have core only solutions but VRM/memory aplications is a possibility.

Sure thing Titan users are concerned about saving a couple bucks.
Oh dear.

This was not selected because of the expense of the card it was just the latest card out at the time, this application will be move on to all new cards low and high end and because the production model will be injection molded Alphacool will be able to produce high qtys, fast stopping the GPU block supply issues we have seen on release.

[Martinm210]

Wow, Very interesting. I like the out-of-the-box manufacturing thinking. Milling such a large mass of irregular copper has always been a huge cost and burden, this is very different.

Look forward to seeing some reviews, very interesting!

[Vetalar]

Any internal pix? Very interested about the design... such design must be very cost-effective!

send from Deathstar via HAL9000

[Aquatuning]

[CrazyNutz]

Nice. So they are threaded in. I'm guessing each one has an o-ring around in?

I can envision the inserts being reusable, and you could just purchase a new acetal body for next gen cards. This would be nice if this is the idea.

[Aquatuning]

yes they have a dual layer thread and o-ring sealing method.

DIY blocks could be a possibility yes, its something they need to look into further.

[st0ned]

This shouldn't be a problema for RAMs but for Core and VRMs I don't think such a small amount of cooper will be able to hold such a big deal of heat. Maybe the reviews prove me wrong but I'm on the skeptical side.

[prava]

The only interesting thing of this is... the price. It's just a way of saving costs on the block, since you barely use any copper except for the parts that are in contact with the parts that get hot. Mmm, not sure how well it would do, not at all.

[Aquatuning]

I'm not sure if I can post reviews from other sites here but there is a clue in the last picture of where you can find a review that has been completed.

When tested it found the Alphacool block had the highest flow rate against EK's / XSPC's / Aquacomputer blocks. But in temperature it beat the XSPC, joint second with the EK and got beat by the Aquacomputer by a few c's butthen there is the price difference to consider.

Of course you will not want to take my word for it so we will be offering these blocks to review on release in co-operation with Alphacool.

[stren]

I'll be including it in the roundup that is posted here, and I'll be measuring VRM and VRAM temps as well as performance vs flow so we'll see how it does

[Martinm210]

The possibility for reuse has my attention. Would be nice to pull the copper bits and finally have a full cover upgrade path. I have always liked GPU only blocks for that reason, but hated air cooling the smaller bit and never felt the full cover price was really justified.

My last VGA upgrade was a 570GTX. I ended up giving up and ran it air cooled these last few years.
Call me cheap, but $120 for a full cover waterblock to cool a $300 card isn't in my priorities. I like the concept especially for the more value oriented cards.

[Nickel020]

This shouldn't be a problema for RAMs but for Core and VRMs I don't think such a small amount of cooper will be able to hold such a big deal of heat. Maybe the reviews prove me wrong but I'm on the skeptical side.

Why should it be a problem for the GPU? The amount of copper is similar to that of a CPU cooler, or a GPU only cooler. And GPU only coolers have been shown to cool hot GPUs like the GTX480 very well indeed.

Here's a first review that shows pretty decent core temperatures:
http://www.hardwaremax.net/wasserkue...owall=&start=8

I'll be including it in the roundup that is posted here, and I'll be measuring VRM and VRAM temps as well as performance vs flow so we'll see how it does

Very much looking forward to this!

The possibility for reuse has my attention. Would be nice to pull the copper bits and finally have a full cover upgrade path. I have always liked GPU only blocks for that reason, but hated air cooling the smaller bit and never felt the full cover price was really justified.

My last VGA upgrade was a 570GTX. I ended up giving up and ran it air cooled these last few years.
Call me cheap, but $120 for a full cover waterblock to cool a $300 card isn't in my priorities. I like the concept especially for the more value oriented cards.

I also think the most interesting thing about this is the ability to re-use the copper parts for future graphics cards and upgrade to a new full cover cooler way cheaper than now. Please do release upgrade "bodies" for this!

[st0ned]

Why should it be a problem for the GPU? The amount of copper is similar to that of a CPU cooler, or a GPU only cooler. And GPU only coolers have been shown to cool hot GPUs like the GTX480 very well indeed.

Because GPUs tend to consume 3x or even 4x more then a CPU ? The fewer copper you have the smaller heat it will be able to hold. This becomes a bigger problem the smaller the flow gets and, as you should know, GPUs are the blocks who usually get the lowest flow.

[madmaxx]

Interesting idea

Because GPUs tend to consume 3x or even 4x more then a CPU ? The fewer copper you have the smaller heat it will be able to hold. This becomes a bigger problem the smaller the flow gets and, as you should know, GPUs are the blocks who usually get the lowest flow.

This is watercooling, whats your point? lol The copper is just there as an interface, the RAD removes the heat...

[Sparky]

Because GPUs tend to consume 3x or even 4x more then a CPU ? The fewer copper you have the smaller heat it will be able to hold. This becomes a bigger problem the smaller the flow gets and, as you should know, GPUs are the blocks who usually get the lowest flow.

The block never holds the heat. It just provides an interface for the water to remove the heat and take it to the radiator for removal from the system.

That copper base doesn't look any smaller than the base of the GPU-only blocks, so it is totally a non-issue. I have a GPU-only block on my 7950, which is overclocked, and it maybe hits 50C under load. Maybe. And that is sharing a MCR320 radiator with my 2600k overclocked to 4.5GHz.

[st0ned]

The block never holds the heat. It just provides an interface for the water to remove the heat and take it to the radiator for removal from the system.

That copper base doesn't look any smaller than the base of the GPU-only blocks, so it is totally a non-issue. I have a GPU-only block on my 7950, which is overclocked, and it maybe hits 50C under load. Maybe. And that is sharing a MCR320 radiator with my 2600k overclocked to 4.5GHz.

As I sad this will become more evident when you go to low flows, say 0.3GPM, in addition I doubt you are running a GPU-only in a multi-GPU config which is very doable with one of this blocks. On another hand don't compare the heat generated from your 7950 to the one coming from a Titan.

But don't take my word for it, since Stern is testing the blocks you will see how much this block performance will degrade with flow (compared with others).

[Sparky]

If you're running down to that low of flow you need a stronger pump, or split up the loop, or something

[paulbagz]

<3 my old ACool 9800GTX block.

Very interesting development!

-PB

[st0ned]

If you're running down to that low of flow you need a stronger pump, or split up the loop, or something

Well if you have the "Standard" 1GPM and run 3-Way parallel you will get to that flow. Same thing for say a 0.6GPM (not that uncommon) with parallel VGAs.

I think that might be a downside from a block such as these, although there are several, some yet to be proven, upsides.

[Utnorris]

That's friggin awesome, especially if they are reusable in newer full cover blocks. The amount of copper should be fine as stated before, GPU only blocks pretty close if not the same as FC blocks. The only reason to get a FC block is so you can cool the whole card and not have to use fans.

[rehpyc]

Less expensive and looks great? Awesome. If it can perform close to the other blocks available, it's got my money.