Best chipset waterblock
 

Hi,

What do you consider to be the best chipset waterblock? :rolleyes:

To me it would be the maze4 from DD. It cools well and has quite low restriction (according to JoeCs tests it is just 3.6" @ 1gpm). Chipsets dont really need a lot of cooling (stock is adequate for most apps and not a lot more for more extreme apps) so to me the pressure drop would be the most important factor for a chipset block.

Yeah ive never seen anything to really prove if these really do any good for OCing, just seems like an expensive restriction. (are you listening writers of procooling :evilaugh: , although seriously ive never seen an article addressing this).

Honestly, id say get a decent air cooled solution and spend the cash on improving the rest of the loop somehow.

But the 40mm fans are SO LOUD! Watercooling is almost a necessity after listening to my Thermalright NB cooler.

or a passive sink like the zalmans.

Or a secondary loop off a little 80mm rad.

Dont start another "is it necessary?" thread. There are tons of those.

I second the maze4. I'd like to see if the Zchip or the maze4 chipset block gives less restriction. Never seen a side by side comparison. Youd think the swifty one gives the least since its just a flat block, basically a coppercap block design.

According to Joe the Swifty has about 6.4" of pressure drop @ 1gpmwhich is also quite low, but still quite a bit more than the maze.

I think the Z-chipset would be more restrictive than either of those because the water path may be just an open channel it has two pretty tight turns to make in the block.

Eh I think the opposite. The maze4's path is more straight but the depth of the channels is like 4mm. The depth of the Z chip is like 8mm. Even though it has more turns just looks like it has more space. But Im just guessing :)

The Zs path may be deeper but the Maze has it much wider. I am personally running the Z but if the maze would of been available I would of probably gotten it instead.

As far as if it is needed, a good HSF combo would probably do as well but I like the idea of no small fans in my system (from my experience they fail more often than the larger fans). Going from the stock cooler on my max3 added more stability over 295~297fsb and allowed me to bench in the 303~305 area depending on the benchmark, so it was helped a little by the block. But on my p4c800 it was the same as the stock passive cooler and lost stability over 295.

perhaps the thing to do is to mod a z-chip by removeing the 2 "spurs" to make it a single wide & deep channel....

Well Nbridge liquid cooling is only good for reducing the noise IMHO

on a side note, anyone planning to use a chipset block on the Intel platform needs to be careful, if there are hoops around the Nbridge. I lost a P4C800-E Deluxe mobo because the Nbridge got chipped, when one of the hoops came off. This was with a chipset block utilizing only 2 hoops.
And last week another chipset block got loose due to those goddamn weak hoops as well.
Using a bit of Arctic Alumina epoxy might help, but not much though... It's also a pain in the butt to resolder those hoops back on the mobo, since you need to remove it first.

My $0.02