3rd party GPU block or eVGA Hydrocopper FTW?

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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Hey all,

Which do you think is better?

I'm thinking the mass produced eVGA watercooleed parts may not have heatsinks mated as well on them as taking a traditional board and adding a block yourself.

On the other hand, it may be more difficult to fit 3rd party GPU blocks to cover the ram properly.

I'd apprecate your opinions on which solution is likely to produce the better results. If they are equivalent, I may be tempted to go with the Hydrocopper boards just for the convenience.
 
Go with the hydrocoppers for the convenience. They are preinstalled. It can be a pain to remove all the gtx480 screws.
I just noticed that these are really hard to find in stock at the retail price. So that may not be practical.
The thing is that aftermarket coolers are made with the reference design in mind. So make sure that any 480 you intend to put a block on has a reference design.
Performance is going to be about the same. I've heard that the hydrocoppers offer excellent gpu cooling performance although their vrm cooling is not as good as some other aftermarket designs.
 
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The flow tests on the EVGA hydrocopper parts were pretty bad. Since I have 3 GPUs I decided to go with the Koolance blocks. Install wasn't too bad and they look and perform exceptionally well.
 
From what I've seen of the EVGA Hydro Copper block it isn't that good compared to other blocks from Danger Den, Koolance and EK.

I saw a tear down of the EVGA block on youtube and the inside was not impressive at all. It didn't appear to have any type of matrix for the water to be spread for surface area contact it was literally like pushing the water around in a U bend as if it was in a tube and the VRM heatsink was poorly attached to the main block, it wasn't a well fitting piece and there was no thermal contact material between the pipe and the block, it was just held down with screws and you could see how the metals rubbing together were taking the shine off the copper.

Overall I wasn't impressed and the performance isn't that great either. The only thing the block has going for it really is its aesthetic appearance. It does look nice but it is obviously cheaply made once you really take a look at it.

In my opinion get an EK, Koolance or Danger Den block and fit it yourself, but be careful the screws on the GTX480 can be a pain to remove so use a high quality screw driver or you may strip your screws.
 
If you want something rather cheap, the MCW60 and 80 both work and both do the job just as well. you can even leave on the fancy stock VRM sinks and just run the fan at the lowest speed possible.

Best part is, they're both under 40 used.

Just sayin'
 
xp3nd4bl3 said:
The flow tests on the EVGA hydrocopper parts were pretty bad. Since I have 3 GPUs I decided to go with the Koolance blocks. Install wasn't too bad and they look and perform exceptionally well.
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Total water-cooling n00b question:

Why is restrictive flow a problem. It's just a matter of making sure you have a sufficiently powerful pump, right? Or is there a danger of starting to blow off hoses or cause leaks once you crank up the pressure?
 
Vicey said:
In my opinion get an EK, Koolance or Danger Den block and fit it yourself, but be careful the screws on the GTX480 can be a pain to remove so use a high quality screw driver or you may strip your screws.
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Interesting. I appreciate the input.

I just ran into another issue I hadn't thought of up front.

I will be cramming these boards into a shuttle XPC case which only has two PCIe slots right next to eachother. In other words, if the cards are double wide, I can only fit one of them.

The Hydrocoppers have the benefit that they are single wide (though I think you hvae to use right ngle fittings for this to fit), so they don't take up the space, whereas the reference design has that big black shroud and the double stainless slot covers to deal with. Is it possible to trim down a reference design GTX480 to fit in a single slot?
 
Zarathustra[H];1036053148 said:
Interesting. I appreciate the input.

I just ran into another issue I hadn't thought of up front.

I will be cramming these boards into a shuttle XPC case which only has two PCIe slots right next to eachother. In other words, if the cards are double wide, I can only fit one of them.

The Hydrocoppers have the benefit that they are single wide (though I think you hvae to use right ngle fittings for this to fit), so they don't take up the space, whereas the reference design has that big black shroud and the double stainless slot covers to deal with. Is it possible to trim down a reference design GTX480 to fit in a single slot?
Click to expand...

Actually,
I just found this

I'm impressed at how much eVGA caters to the modding community...
 
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A real life friend of mine just bought 2 of the Hydrocoppers off of ebay. The main reason he got them was the convenience of them being single slot.
 
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