Water Block Roundup Part 1 - Discussion

[Joe]

yeh THG is a freak'n joke eh?

[Brad]

hehe, on the same day the best and the worst watercooling reviews ever are posted.

the only reason why I go to THG is because they get cpu's first, and they do nice huge mobo roundups. Other than that, Dr Tom has really ****ed up his site

[Mr_Pyro]

Originally posted by Joe


Water temps are shown. and yes ambient was room temp. Amazing how I was able to keep the room temp within 1 DegC in a 4 month span between tests

Wouldn´t changes in the relative humidity of the air in your lab, change the performance of the radiator.
As far as I know a higher relative humidity of the air can transfer more heat.

The same thing goes for air presure.
the higher air presure the better heat transfer.

At least the humidity does change quite a bit between the difrent seasons. It does of course depend on where you live, but the changes are quite big here in Sweden, where the humidity is very low in the cold subzero winter days and high in the varm rainy summer days.

The effect of humidity can quite easily be tested by runinga a bong-cooler for a few hours in the lab, between two test runs of a waterblock.(should get the relative humidity up to at least 90%).

My personal uneducated gues is that the air presure is negliable, but that the humidity is of importance.

Great review by the way.

/Mr_Pyro

[bonbonfoni]

thg is such a lousy page

they are germans
we are so sorry

thg didn't have many friends here

[newbie]

Bonbonfoni -
Where are those blocks you showed available? They certainly are interesting looking!

I'd bet a bottle of Glen Livet though that they don't outperform the Danger Den/Z3 by more than 1 degree celsius, if at all. Reason I say that is if you look at Joe's core temp graph for all the blocks, the curve appears to be approaching an asymptote. It looks like the Danger Den and Z3 are very close to what's possible given the other components in the test.

Of course it could be that the asymptote is a result of the block designs that were tested and that the cross-hatched copper core with the lucite top might adjust the curve. At a hunch though, I think those narrow channels would only strut their stuff if the water is pushed pretty hard. Water can get pretty sticky in narrow spaces.

Caveats on the bet - they have to be tested using exactly the same equipment following the same steps, we only look at the last 15 minutes of a 30 minute run, and we're comparing core temps - ambient temps deltas.

[bonbonfoni]

a year ago most of our coolers looked like the ones tested

the new coolers really kicked the old ones

www.cooling-solutions.de

they produce the k 4.1



but it is currently out of stock maybe the resellers have some left


www.aqua-computer.de

this is the home of the cuplex




www.watercool.de

heatkiller 1.6




i got the heatkiller 1.5








it weighs 14 ounzes 400 gramm

so don't worry if your pump break down
the cpu will stay cool



www.low-noise.de is a big reseller

and

www.pc-cooling.de


feel free to check out our cooling scene

[Joe]

Humidity was controled. it was around 40 - 50 % for all the tests. It was a factor I considered.

a 90% humdity level is pointless, unless you run your PC in the jungle you wont have that atmosphere all the time around your radiator.

Joe

Originally posted by Mr_Pyro



Wouldn´t changes in the relative humidity of the air in your lab, change the performance of the radiator.
As far as I know a higher relative humidity of the air can transfer more heat.

The same thing goes for air presure.
the higher air presure the better heat transfer.

At least the humidity does change quite a bit between the difrent seasons. It does of course depend on where you live, but the changes are quite big here in Sweden, where the humidity is very low in the cold subzero winter days and high in the varm rainy summer days.

The effect of humidity can quite easily be tested by runinga a bong-cooler for a few hours in the lab, between two test runs of a waterblock.(should get the relative humidity up to at least 90%).

My personal uneducated gues is that the air presure is negliable, but that the humidity is of importance.

Great review by the way.

/Mr_Pyro

[Strafe]

Wow! those German blocks look great! Defininately get them in your roundup Joe!

[Elemental]

Germany not only produces nice cars

Here's a pic of the K4.1 with the new mounting:



And a pic of my case (sorry for the poor image quality):




cu
Elemental

[BladeRunner]

I notice in pics the Z3 looks as if it has restrictive 1/8 bsp threaded barbs now?. I have one of these that was bought long before they came up with the "Z3" name and it had 1/4 bsp threaded nylon barbs. I replaced these with 1/2 brass barbs, (1/4 Bsp threaded), that I reamed out so the ID was as wide as the channeling, (9.5mm), and smoothed them to the flow. I also had the base milled from 4.6mm to 1mm and it has given much improved flow and 4°C to 5°C lower max temps in my set-up.
Nice to see the Z3 doing well anyhow considering it tends to get overlooked.

[Joe]

Elemental, thats one DAMN nice looking block!!

[Elemental]

Got some more Pics :









You should really try to get one of these for the "socket a - roundup"! I'm a big fan of this cooler!
(You can find some more pics on my hp)


cu
Elemental

[jaani]

wow me wants me wants
time to do some research...ahhh, thank goodness for babelfish!

[bothari]

Been looking at htose german sites with google's translation, so far found these two interesting tests :
Low-noise's test
PC Reports.de 's Test
Both are already going through google for translation , so beware of the weird terms

What's interesting about these is that they kinda agree on results for the top performers.... and the top one on both is innovatek's Rev 3... Innovatek's half-price cheapy (45 euros, roughly $40 US) seems quite good, also.

Oh and those cute plexyglass k4.1 are second place.


Make of this what you will

[Brad]

woah, that wall of waterblocks looks so darned cool. I wonder if a couple of those german blocks could be sent to Joe..

[boycee]

i have no past experience and am after a good water block, i was looking at the Swiftech block 462.

But bladeRunner has advised that i can get better for my money, What do you guys reckon will work nice, and i can get my hands on in the uk ?

MY spec, 1.4 Athlon @ 1.4, Abit KT7A-Raid

Any ideas would be great, (links ideal)

Cheers people

ps, that heatkiller 1.6 looks the bollox, does it perform ?

[tourist]

I'm sure you are suprised that Z3 performed so well, so much 'hatred' towards OCH. Dont get me wrong, I'm not from OCH I like your unbias attitude, and full of useful datas. But I would like to see the Swiftech block as well. Unlike your country, Malaysia has basically 90%-100% humidity most of the time

[Mr_Pyro]

Originally posted by Joe
Humidity was controled. it was around 40 - 50 % for all the tests. It was a factor I considered.

a 90% humdity level is pointless, unless you run your PC in the jungle you wont have that atmosphere all the time around your radiator.

Joe

The fact that you controled the humidity makes the review of yours eaven more professional.

But the reason why I mentioned cranking the humidity up to 90%, is that it would be very intresting to se how much it affects the performance of the radiator.
One test run at 45% and one at 90% humidity and check out the diffrence.

/Mr_Pyro

[morphling1]

Hey Joe please answer my first post.

posted by me: First I must say incredible work with review Joe. And now wanna know if you will test my water block , I will send it to you ,but I'll need address where to send it. Here's my email . But there is one bad thing, I'm currently serving in the army, and I'll be out for next three weeks, so you can get this wb in 4-5 weeks if you're still interested.

[Bollocks]

Joe,

Absolutely brilliant writing, great to see some meaningful information instead of "Buy it its gr8!!"

Someone further up was talking about a couple of Australian waterblocks....any info on them?

Living in aus makes it difficult to get blocks unless you are willing to wait a month or two, and id like to check up on these couple of waterblocks for my upcoming system.

But kudos to ya Joe, awesome writeup, especially being able to do it when you are hunting for work....I'm in the same boat and I wish u all the luck

[Brad]

http://www.silverprop.com/sp/products.asp

go there, the guy is based in melbourne. (coming from NZ I can relate what it is like, the American's get all the cool shit)

[icel0rd]

I just have to have a K4.1 cooler. It looks good and performs very well. The only issue is that I live in the US and I'm not sure how to get one of these things. I went ahead and used a translator to understand what I needed to in order to submit an order. One of the two options was to send money to an account or something, and the other was COD (cash on delivery). I chose cash on delivery and I hope I get it.

Has anyone from the US successfully scored one of these waterblocks? I would really like to get one if I can.


http://www.low-noise.de/shop/images/k41_150.jpg

[icel0rd]

Hey Elemental, where did you get the mounting hardware for that K4.1 block? That is exactly what I need!

Thanks in advance!

[Strafe]

I'm with you Ice, the makers of the cuplex also make some sweet blocks for vidcards and chipsets too. I'm gonna do some emailing to see if there is a US distributor or if the mfg's ship to the US (that will be $$$ 'tho) and these blocks are already expensive.

[icel0rd]

Could you do me a favor and let me know if you have any luck? I'll do the same for you on my quest.

Thanks