umm ist it smarter to reverse engineer an alpha pal 6045 and drill 1/2" hole in middle, through the fins, and stop at bsa, and have 4 outlest, connected to a tank?

wonder what it would be like if you cut the middle channel and just use the out channels with the swirlys

That is indeed a very thorough review, but I would like to make a couple of comments and suggestions:

I agree with newbie that temperature-delta is the most important figure, but it should really be the difference between core temp. and water intake temp, as this eliminates every part of the cooling system except the waterblock itself. Personally I would then prefer it if this where then divided by heat output and displayed as thermal resistance in C/W as this is a standard measurement of cooler performance.

I also agree with newbie that maximum temperatures are the important ones, as it is maximum temperature that determines the maximum stable core speed. It doesn't how fast or slow the temperature changes.

An additional calculation that could be done (not that you would want to do any more, having seen how much work you put into this!) is to work out how much heat, in Watts, is being transfered through the waterblock. This can be calculated from the temperature difference between water entering and leaving the block and the flow rate, and knowing the specific heat capacity and density of water. This would be useful because it would show how much heat is not going through the block (i.e. is lost through the underside of the CPU).

Simply, I think C/W is not accurate enough to be trusted.

The simple reason for this is: Can you prove to me how many watts of heat is going to the block?? Can you prove to me that "Radiate" is accurate? If you can give me 100% proof that I am putting EXACTLY that many watts of heat to a block, then I will start to use C/W. Till then I think its an irresponsible measure to use on CPU based tests since no one can promise you exactly how much heat is being put through it.

I don't think that the issue with C/W is that great; the maximum heat wattages (which is what radiate uses) are right from the AMD technical documents, and if you read up on some of the stress programs then they usually agree that ~ 89% of the theoretical max load is what they can generate. Here is a nice post about that:

http://www.benchtest.com/calc.html

Looking at the AMD technical document for the XP, then they also come up with 89% as the typical load temp. Anyway, the point of reporting C/W isn't to try to pull the wool over everyone's eyes or to add another fudge factor; it is designed to make results comparable between users more readily. If I see you have a TBird at 1600MHz and I have a 1600+ XP at stock, I can still estimate quite well what delta T that I would get from a waterblock by looking at your roundup. To do this though I have to normalize to the heat load and like it or not that means C/W. As long as I go get the heat wattage from the same place (AMD tech documents are good sources for this) then the comparison is perfectly valid.

The good news is that there aren't a lot of different programs out there that do this; Radiate is pretty widely accepted and seems to be pretty close to the 100% load numbers in the AMD pdfs. I personally use the 89% heat wattage for C/W as per the benchtest.com page, but the wattage I use in the equation is always right there in the review or article.

unfortunately I do see it as just another number to add to the mix. And I know where Radaite gets its numbers from, I just think there are too many variables that can affect the actual heat output of a CPU.

I mean you are trying to get something meant to do math to generate a constant heat. Well there is an OS running on that CPU, background services, temp reading services ( if you are using MBM), and many other things that will take CPU time away from your load app.

Windows is not that smooth with CPU time handover either, it will cause a lag before the load app gets control of the core after a process takes some time away. This will cause a drop in CPU load and a drop in overall heat output. The only place I think C/W should be used it on a Lab quality heat source that is known and tested to be true, and isnt affected by what ever background process may be running in an OS.

I may be wrong but I thought we were going for accuracy and not just nice looking numbers? Giving C/W may be the "in thing" now, but I dont buy it and dont care about those numbers when I see a review. Its that damn Fuzzy Math again... :)

I dunno about that totally. With my diode reader and 1600+ I get the same C/W every time I test the dynatron BH-635. There are of course slight variations in cpu load, but they are totally masked by the 1C resolution of the reader and the ambient temperature probe on my A7V-133.

Here is a useful aspect of C/W:

http://www.overclockers.com/articles518/index02.asp

See how the C/W values change with heat load applied? That is because there is something awry with his reader (probably the leads are too long). If the results were only reported as delta T, then I wouldn't be able to pick up on that nearly as easily.

let me know how you do that.. ive been kicking around that idea too.

yea acctualy. whoi hast. i first got the idea when i saw a zalman flowercooler. gold plater. thaught u could make some modifications and make one badass waterblock.

Hey better late than never. Just read ya roundup. Still a good read, even though it's pretty dated by now. I just wanted to point out something about the graphs on the last page. The Peak Core Temp graph is missing the block from cool-computers. And something that would make the 3 graphs more reader-friendly. If you used the same color bar for same block across the 3 graphs it would be much easier to digest. I can't wait for the next installment 8)

peace.
unloaded

Ok I have a question, what exactly comprises your pump control system? I have a Gen-X Mak4 (1150 PGH, 23Ft of head) and I would like to be able to turn it down at night when im trying to sleep :D Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Talk about a blast from the past! The Hydrothruster varies voltage similar to a dimmer switch on a light. It doesn't work all that well actually and I suspect it isn't great for the life expectancy of the pump.

When does part 2 take place? :)

I had heard the same on the expected life expectancy drop, I was just wondering if your device was made for this operation. My pump isnt unbearable. Sorry about ressurecting the old thread, prob could have just PMed you the Q.

I wouldn't do it with an expensive pump. No worries on the old thread resurrection; was just surprised to see it.

razor6: You'll have to PM Joe. I'm sure its HIGH on his list of things to do :)

It falt out sucks actually. On mine there isn't much of a middle ground between low and high. My pump keeps locking up when the water gets above 28C aswell. Finally stopped using it.