Introduction

The Intel corei7 cpu is a power hog of a cpu that needs watercooling. As everyone know already. I got the waterblocks purely for fun. And overclocking is my game. I wanted to try out which performs the best.

The test will be trying to cool the cpu as much as possible and doing so by watercooling. Using the dts sensors on the cores I will record them to get the best waterblock from the bunch.

Idle power of my mobo..and my full cpu load...this is a tremendous amount of wattage. I have the gtx285 when running it with furmark it only consumes 3xx watts from the wall. The core i7 cpu rapes it in terms of power usage. power meter: kill-a-watt







The setup

Radiator is the gtx480 from Hwlabs. Probably is the best 4x120 pc radiator available. The fans are Scythe Kaze 3000 fans in push pull configuration. Fans are powered from the Sunbeam rheobus extreme that has been overvolted to around 13v to achieve 12volts on the fans. Andreabz features the effect of push pull on the rads on his estimator (link). It is one of my favorite references. I would definitely call it the God book of Watercooling.

The pumps are 2 Swiftech 355 in series. Primary pump is with an Xspc reservoir top..then the second pump is with the regular xspc acryllic top. flow testing was done months ago. link to it:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/...d.php?t=213106

1/2 true silver barbs and 1/2-3/4 tubes with some clamps.. distilled water silver coils.

The waterblocks

Koolance 350
Swiftech GTZ
DTek Fuzion V2
DTek Fuzion V2 with fits top (excluded - leaky)
EK Supreme (excluded – ran out of time)
EK Supreme LT

The simple game

Simple as it is. Here’s the brief procedure.

1. Connected everything
2. bled the loop and check for leaks
3. mounted the water block
4. load bios oc settings (4140 ht on vcore at 1.57v)
5. windows vista
6. realtemp 3…started logging
7. record room temp
8. prime95 torture test with the second choice large fft run 10-15 minutes, used large fft for more heat on the cores
9. repeat


Room temperature was controlled to about 23c, minimum and max temps were 22.7 and 23.1

The results



4th is the Dtek Fuzion V2. Similar to the GTZ, performance is ok, but it can’t play with the high restriction water blocks.

3rd is the Swiftech GTZ. Again it performed far from high restriction blocks. Here it shows how the core i7 overwhelmed it. when I tried this on the core2 series, it performed ok. take note of correct mounting.

Second place is the EK supreme LT, at first I mounted this block horizontal(the inlet and outlet were top to bottom) I was shocked how so so it performed, when i rotated it 90 degrees.To my surprise it performed really well. Flow seems really good just by watching how it bled. The delrin used is rather good. It bent alittle bit. flow testing will be done when i'm back.

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First place is the Koolance 350, the first mount was there already since I tested it the last time...and did good. I used it primarily. Again showing its capability, it achieved the best temps. This remains my favorite.