NV-68 vs Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 !?

[Jackyl]

Ok, I've been doing tons and tons of reasearch as I want to water cool my current video card "Evga 6800GT@Ultra speeds" I can push this card a bit past ultra speeds 401/1100 but my idle is 52c "125.6f" and ambient temp is 36c "96.8" Under load temps are as follows Load 77c "170.6f"

Now I'm not new to watercooling but I've always had this theory that I followed. Watercooling is much like air cooling as your dependent on the ambient temparture. Now if you water cooling something sure the water is moving the heat where as air cooling the air is moving the heat. Watercooling is more efficient as it doesn't push the heat to something else in the case it removes the heat from the case while air cooling your dependent on the case fans removing the hot air from the case.

Danger Den has a 6800 waterblock called the NV-68 and here is a review from www.themodfathers.com

Arctic Cooling has a air cooler the NV Silencer 5 for the 6800 series card and here is the review for that one.

Now what baffles me is the temps that these two units are doing. I mean for the cost of the nv-68 "129.99" you would think that it would perform better than the air cooling unit for 29.99 from Arctic Cooling! But look at these temps

Arctic Cooling Temps
IDLE
Ambient GPU Delta Difference
Stock Cooler 28c 57c 29c
NV Silencer 5 31c 53c 22c -7c

LOAD

Stock Cooler 28c 78c 50c
NV Silencer 5 34c 66c 32c -18c

As you can see, the NV Silencer 5 has quite a huge effect! At idle loads, the NV Silencer 5 was actually 9°C cooler than the stock BFG copper heatpipe cooler! from www.rojakpot.com

The gap widened even further with the GPU at full load. The GPU was actually 18 °C cooler with the NV Silencer 5, than the stock cooler!




Danger Den NV-68 Temps
nVidia Reference 64°C
Danger Den NV-68 47°C


The sheer amount of difference between stock and the NV-68 speaks for itself, cutting 17°C is no small temperature drop. However that is only part of the picture, the difference between idle and load is only 1°C giving you a huge amount of stability. -- from www.themodfathers.com


Now tell me how is it possible that the air cooling unit from Arctic cooling can beat the watercooling solution from danger den? Now is this a fluke or is this truth? What is the ambient between the 2 what are the variables I don't know it's hard to say but from the information that I have shown and found there is no reason not to buy the arctic cooling nv silencer 5 for the performance/cost that you get from this unit vs water cooling..

:hypnotize

[Fragger56]

from what i gather from what you posted it looks as if the danger den temps are actual temperatures, while the silencer graph is in delta °c delta °c is the differenve in temps above ambient while the DD temps are absoloute.

so in the case of the silencer stock temps would be 50°c above ambient (holy crap) and then 32°c above ambient.
the danger den temps are probably actual temps as in reference in 64°c above zero and then nv-68 is 47°c above zero (zero is freezing point of water)

[Elmmx5]

I wouldn't expect 32 degrees under load from an NV silencer 5. I have exactly the card you are referring to. An eVGA 6800GT running at Ultra speed. I get maybe 53 degrees idle and under load it may jump to 61 degrees or so. This seems to be consistent with what most are getting by reading the reviews from newegg.com on the cooler. Just in case you are curious, I am using Arctic Silver 5 for the GPU and the supplied non-silver paste for the memory chips.

[Jackyl]

Thank you Elmmx5, that is the most anyone has said about this on 2 boards. Do you recommend the NV 5 for the cost of the unit for the GT ? Or is it just a waste of money if I were considering going with the danger den NV-68 or the innovatek or coolance 6800 cooling blocks.

[MadHacker]

I think another magor factor that isnnot considered is that we are not comparing the 2 coolers on the identical video card.
I have seen on motherboards that are the same make and model but show diffrent temperatures.
I unfortuatly am unable to open the link to rojakpot.com so i can't see the review but i don't think they are using the identical testbed.
if I'm wrong then i'm shure someone will be more then happy to correct me on this.

[Jackyl]

No, your not wrong they are using different cards. They are both 6800 GT's though.

Either way I just thought that it was kinda of weird how the numbers turned out and I wanted to get some more input on these items. I'm leaning more towards the DD NV-68 at this time anyways.

[Elmmx5]

My choice would definitely be the NV silencer 5. In my case at least, it happily overclocks to Ultra speeds using it and stays at the same of lower temperatures than the stock GT. On top of that it's very quiet and exhausts hot air from the case instead of dumping back in like stock. I've also thought about the Danger Den block, but from what I hear, it's not going to do much to improve overclockablilty. It also dumps quite a lot of heat into the rest of the cooling loop. I guess it depends on your priorities when water cooling. I would rather get as much speed out of my CPU and not complicate it with the DD cooler in there. The clincher for me was the NV silencer 5 costs 1/5 as much as the DD block for just about the same result.