ATI 5970 Blocks

[overclocking101]

wow the aquacomputer blocks look so sleek how skinny they are, but whats all this with the vrms overheating?? quite odd

[Hondacity]

wow the aquacomputer blocks look so sleek how skinny they are, but whats all this with the vrms overheating?? quite odd

do you know how thick cpu block bases are?

[eXa]

Most of the reason the AC block is so thin is because they use a steel plate cover instead of the normal acrylic or delrin tops and the height of the channel in wich the water flow is quite low.

[hchristian]

I would love to see a block shoot out

There's not much comparisons between VGA waterblocks that I know of

[ChielScape]

I am delighted to confirm that the Epsilon 5900 is now in production.





Housing is thick clear polycarbonate
Base plate is chrome plated C110 electrolytic copper; cooling engine is dual 0.6mm pin matrix
Back plate is thick black-anodized brushed aluminum


As usual the product features pre-installed thermal pads, stainless steel standoffs, and re-uses ATI's excellent spring cross brackets. All AMD-specified critical components including ASICS, PLX, Memory modules (front & back), and VR's are cooled. As with the Komodo series, spacing between inlet and outlet G1/4 ports is sufficient to accomodate large compression fittings, but remains relatively narrow to allow clean and compact tube routing.

Price has not been established at this time.
ETA is 3 weeks.

I hope the .6mm pins dont have the same issues as the .25mm ones on the XT.

[Koolance]

Most of the reason the AC block is so thin is because they use a steel plate cover instead of the normal acrylic or delrin tops and the height of the channel in wich the water flow is quite low.

This is also the reason we use a steel plate. It strengthens the acrylic, which allows us to keep all of our blocks within a single slot height.

Tim

[Koolance]

Our HD 5970 water blocks are now in stock! The regular retail price is $139.99.

Tim

[Mekrel]

I hope the .6mm pins dont have the same issues as the .25mm ones on the XT.

Why do you keep banging on about this?

It's been proven the XT is the current best performing CPU block on the market - so it's obviously not a problem.

Stop scaremongering, it's not cool

[Romir]

Frozencpu has all four variants of the EK blocks in stock. I went ahead and bought an acetel to match the classified full board block. It should arrive friday or saturday. I expect to have a better initial experience than the one my launch 4870x2 EK block gave!

It'll be modestly cooled with by a 240 rad in a TJ07 with the (warmer) cross-flow air from the the 480.

[EvilClocker]

The Final DD Block Performs Great. They got the Water closer to the Rear VRM.. I dont think it matters if you have water over the VRM Directly or not.. Because The VRM. Are going to put out alot of Heat Once You Start Pushing the Voltage up on the Card. I can tell you DD Block is 30C cooler on everything compaired to Air :-)

Not to mention DangerDen are the cheapest Price block to and MAde in USA !

[Diverge]

Frozencpu has all four variants of the EK blocks in stock. I went ahead and bought an acetel to match the classified full board block. It should arrive friday or saturday. I expect to have a better initial experience than the one my launch 4870x2 EK block gave!

It'll be modestly cooled with by a 240 rad in a TJ07 with the (warmer) cross-flow air from the the 480.

I had placed an order for one late last night, then had 2nd thoughts this morning and canceled the order. I'm gonna hold out for more reviews, since I'm concerned which blocks offer the best cooling on the VRMs - I'd like to see the #'s.

I didn't want to end up paying $150+ for a block, only for it to be revised cause the VRMs were the limiting factor. On air, I can get up to at least 900MHz stable, so for now, I'll just keep the stock HSF.

[Eddy_EK]

I had placed an order for one late last night, then had 2nd thoughts this morning and canceled the order. I'm gonna hold out for more reviews, since I'm concerned which blocks offer the best cooling on the VRMs - I'd like to see the #'s.

I didn't want to end up paying $150+ for a block, only for it to be revised cause the VRMs were the limiting factor. On air, I can get up to at least 900MHz stable, so for now, I'll just keep the stock HSF.

You should not worry about this.
You can see which block has water closest to VRM's.
This is it.

[mechman]

Here's a link to a guy running the DD block Crossfire: Linky

And this first post for his system build...surprised his system cools the CPU and the 2 GPU's with just a swifty 320...Linky

[Norway]

Will there soon come out a Uni-sink solution from any of you ?
I have 2 MCW60 and a Maze5 I like to reuse (5970+5870 @ trifire)


Is there a uni-sink solution for 5870 out yet ?

[gabe]

Will there soon come out a Uni-sink solution from any of you ?
I have 2 MCW60 and a Maze5 I like to reuse (5970+5870 @ trifire)


Is there a uni-sink solution for 5870 out yet ?

The 5870 and 5850 versions heatsinks are already in stock in the US. We just have not had the time to update the web site, and put the products on sale as we are preparing another major product release. We should hopefully release them to the channels next week. There are no plans for a 5970 heatsink at this time.

[Romir]

Leak testing and loop reconfiguration time.




Nice match!

[Scaniris]

Hello,

After EKWB FC-HD5970 installation yesterday, here are the temp results after 1h30 of Furmark @ 1920x1200 with MSAA @ x8.

The GPU Z screen shots show maximum temps recorded during the benchmark. The GPUZ windows up shows GPU1 info, the second window down displays GPU2 info.

BEFORE the stability test, here are the monitoring informations:


And DURING the benchmark, a screen shot of monitoring information (the Furmark was running in front of all the rest during stability testing, here it's running behind only for the screen shot, I used the Alt + tab function to switch windows)

[BlueAqua]

Looks great Romir. How was the installation?

[Norway]

gabe:
well there are no re-usable parts on the 5970 cooler as the core "unit" and memory/PWM cooler "unit" are "fused together", I'm in need of a good cooling solution for a 5970 to fit together with my MCW60's

[Scaniris]

As you can see.... performances are good isn't it?

BUT... since yesterday I have stability issues... I don't know why. I mean during 3D Mark Vantage benchmarking, also with STALKER benchmark... I get a system freeze... impossible to close the benchmark, display is frozen, and the only way to unlock the situation is to reset the system with hardware switch. Any idea? Is it a driver issue, or a hardware issue?

I tried to install the ATi driver again, the Beta 5 available on the ATi website and also the XFX official released driver. If I lauch 3D mark vantage 1 time it's running until the end, but if I close the 3D Mark during the benchmark, and try to launch it again, I have a freeze during the first 3D run. For Stalker Call of Pripyat benchmark, freeze after 10 seconds of benchmark... And I also had a freeze when trying to play COD4 MW4 with the Eyefinity feature enabled on two monitors with different resolution (1920x1200 + 1920x1080...).

I'm affraid ... because I hope this is not a HARDWARE issue... and ''only'' a software issue. Regarding temps I get, everything seems to be ok but...

When dismounting the card, I saw that a component was not well fixed... this one on the picture:



I mean when putting the finger on it, it was moving a little bit... but still connected anyway, I mean the 3 others did not move, perfectly fixed but these 2 where a little bit moving.. And as you can see I was using a special anti static carpet with wristband (the red background on the picture, it's a 3M professional tool...). And when removing the stock cooler, I did it very carefully... and slowly...

What do you think about that? Is it possible that this happens because hardware problems? I don't think so because the Furmark stability test works fine, the 3D Mark Vantages runs fine if I don't close it before during a bench run...

I need your opinion. Is there maybe a component that is not well cooled with the EKWB Waterblock?

[Romir]

Looks great Romir. How was the installation?

Thanks. The installation was surprisingly easy. The only gpu waterblock I've owned before was an EK 4870x2 so the process was familiar. I don't recall if that block came with pre-cut thermal pads for the memory. Having those for this installation was a pleasant surprise. About half of the large thermal pad for the VRMs was left over so there was plenty for botching some cuts.

I thought the spacers would give me some trouble like I had with the full X58 block, but they stayed in place perfectly on the first try. The cards smaller, flat pcb probably helped the placement along with the even weight/size of the block.

[Scaniris]

Yeah something else I saw when mounting the EKWB waterblock: on the mounting instruction delivered with the FC HD5970, the mounting description for thermal pads shows that we have to put a thermal pad there (see the photo, I can scan the mouting instruction if needed):



BUT... after mouting the block... I've checked all the visible thermal contacts and here is what I saw:



Absolutely NO thermal contact between block and this component....

I had a look on the stock cooler of my graphic card, have a look there:



So the question is: why the installation manual asks for placing a thermal pad there and why is there no contact betweek Waterblock and this component???

[Scaniris]

Edit

[Apollo4g]

My guess is so it does not perform a short and act more as an insulating layer than a thermal conductor.

[Scaniris]

Yeah it could be the answer.

because when you look on my screen shot some answers befor, you can see my GPU-Z monitoring after 1h30 of Furemark and all the temperature are really LOW. If this component was used to be hot during operations, it may have beed monitored too.

I can try to put a thermal sensor on it to check if it's hot of not. I'll do this it's easy to access this side of the graphic card.