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Best block for a 6800?

B

Bionic_Tuna

Weaksauce
Joined
May 1, 2003
Messages
70
I'm thinking about upgrading to a 6800 gt or ultra soon... what are the best blocks out there?
 
Best performance = DD 6800 water block = 110$

Best performance for money = Swiftech MCW50 GPU block with 6800 adapter kit. = 50$. Only good for GPU not memory cooling. I can get 1700 stable on my memory, and its not hot to the touch underload. I found one for 30$ used with the adaptor kit $$

3rd option: Cyclone Fusion HL with GF4/FX/6800 clip. I cant find it for any cheaper than 65$ plus shipping. I am assuming it will perform just as well as the swiftech.
 
Ok let's put it this way, my Swiftech MCW50 GPU block being in line with a pressy at 3.9 in a room temp of 25C idle 38C-39C load 43C-44C that's with prime+D3D running for an hour or so. before watercooling my 6800 ultra my idle was 53C and load 72C. by the way, my CPU temps are about 30C idle and 36C load.
 
xtatdsm said:
Ok let's put it this way, my Swiftech MCW50 GPU block being in line with a pressy at 3.9 in a room temp of 25C idle 38C-39C load 43C-44C that's with prime+D3D running for an hour or so. before watercooling my 6800 ultra my idle was 53C and load 72C. by the way, my CPU temps are about 30C idle and 36C load.
Click to expand...

Is this supposed to be good? I was expecting a little better temp.... or maybe you have cpu and gpu both on same loop? Going to plunge back into water just on gpu this time (cpu is phase change cooled) and was wondering what kind of temp I should expect.
 
well yes I am running my pressy (we all know how hot these run) and the 6800 ultra in the same loop. let's see some temps of you guys who have the DD 6800 block. I am sure it won't be much better than 44C at full GPU/CPU load, or at least that's why the reviews that I have read so far show.
 
I have the swiftech mcw50 block. The card never goes above 40C..EVER. And that is with an AMD64 3500 in the loop.
 
let's see some temps of you guys who have the DD 6800 block.
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Well I'm getting 22C full load with DD 6800 block....so there.... :p












Nah, just kidding, your pretty dead on with the temps. I idle at ~40, and hit ~44 under load, depending on room temps. I just bought it because it looked badass, and I liked that it covered the ram. Plus, I couldn't find any of the 6800 adapters for the Swifty when I was trying to find a block. It did help my overclock pretty well though, got another 30 MHz out of the GPU and 70MHz out of the mem. If I had it to do again though , I'd just go for the Swifty block and some big ass ram sinks, and save 50 bucks.
 
Toad21 said:
Very interesting. I cannot find any reviews of this block.
Click to expand...

lol me either. i just saw it today and wondered how good it was. i was hoping someone would buy it and let me know... I really like the price (DD too much $$$ imo)
 
the DD is NOT worth the price, for several reasons. First, it obviously doesnt provide the best cooling for your entire loop, as its dumping the heat of the GPU and memory into your loop, giving you worse temps overall. Second, your memory doesnt NEED active cooling, heatsinks are more than enough. The card's memory usually tops out before heat starts to restrict it anyway, so just get some OCZ copper BGA ramsinks on them, and that is more than enough. Finally, look at the flow reduction you would get from that block, its rediculous. This would also factor into your temps, giving you another preformance hit.

Go with the Silverprop Fusion HL. I have it, its amazing. temps never go above 40*C, and if they do under heavy load, only up to maybe 42-43*C. Also, its all copper and brass, so you wont have to worry about corrosion, as you would with the MCW50. Oh yeah, its also not $110 or whatever the DD block is.
 
Achilles17 said:
Second, your memory doesnt NEED active cooling, heatsinks are more than enough. The card's memory usually tops out before heat starts to restrict it anyway, so just get some OCZ copper BGA ramsinks on them, and that is more than enough. Finally, look at the flow reduction you would get from that block, its rediculous. This would also factor into your temps, giving you another preformance hit.
\
Click to expand...

Anything that goes over 60c easily do need some good cooling. Yes maybe not water but heatsink along won't help much. For typical watercooling guy, this kind of things are not issue. But if you start approaching limits, there are so many things that need some active cooling with heatsinks on it. mosfets, voltage regulators, memories, etc. As for DD block, I would love to use it granted few things. 1) I have 6800series card which I don't atm.
2) GPU must be all alone in its loop with separate pump * Radi.
3) Something ligther than that one... something like http://snt-systems.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=31&products_id=152
Still pricey but looks lighter and seems to concentrate more on GPU core than memory.
Now, I come from different perspective from most of people here as I do have totally separate cooling for my CPU and gave up going frugal on fans in case due to the need for case to be cooled throughly to match up with what CPU is draining. Don't think that DD block was designed for even 5% of water cooling crowd in mind from what I can see though.
 
Achilles17 said:
the DD is NOT worth the price, for several reasons. First, it obviously doesnt provide the best cooling for your entire loop, as its dumping the heat of the GPU and memory into your loop, giving you worse temps overall. Second, your memory doesnt NEED active cooling, heatsinks are more than enough. The card's memory usually tops out before heat starts to restrict it anyway, so just get some OCZ copper BGA ramsinks on them, and that is more than enough. Finally, look at the flow reduction you would get from that block, its rediculous. This would also factor into your temps, giving you another preformance hit.

Go with the Silverprop Fusion HL. I have it, its amazing. temps never go above 40*C, and if they do under heavy load, only up to maybe 42-43*C. Also, its all copper and brass, so you wont have to worry about corrosion, as you would with the MCW50. Oh yeah, its also not $110 or whatever the DD block is.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I was going to write.. good show!
 
Achilles17 said:
the DD is NOT worth the price, for several reasons. First, it obviously doesnt provide the best cooling for your entire loop, as its dumping the heat of the GPU and memory into your loop, giving you worse temps overall. Second, your memory doesnt NEED active cooling, heatsinks are more than enough. The card's memory usually tops out before heat starts to restrict it anyway, so just get some OCZ copper BGA ramsinks on them, and that is more than enough. Finally, look at the flow reduction you would get from that block, its rediculous. This would also factor into your temps, giving you another preformance hit.

Go with the Silverprop Fusion HL. I have it, its amazing. temps never go above 40*C, and if they do under heavy load, only up to maybe 42-43*C. Also, its all copper and brass, so you wont have to worry about corrosion, as you would with the MCW50. Oh yeah, its also not $110 or whatever the DD block is.
Click to expand...

I disagree, though you make good points. A video card block isn't supposed to "provide the best cooling for your entire loop", it's supposed to provide the best cooling for your *video card*. Adding another block of *any* kind to the loop will give you worse temps overall, and it will reduce flow rate. He's not cooling the cpu, so I don't think it's going to hurt his overall performance. If you are watercooling the NB, put that first in the loop, as it won't add as much heat as the gpu with the Vmemory. This may make your video temps higher than they would be at the beginning of the loop, but you'll probably still see an improvement. If you do try it this way, experiment with different loop-orders, because your setup won't be the same as anyone elses.

IMHO, DD has the best video-and-Vmem block out there, it's the only one with 1/2" ID fittings, it's all-copper, and it's got that clear top I love. If only they'd make blocks like this for all the other video cards, we could all have something to consider. I also wish they'd have the gpu first in the video block internal loop, instead of running it around the mem, but it probably doesn't make a difference.

I believe the video memory does get hot enough to require active cooling, because ATI certainly wouldn't spend the extra money on using an OEM air-cooler that covered the memory if they didn't think it was necessary. RAMsinks do work, but you still need a fan to blow air over them, so they aren't an option if you want to go silent, or *completely* watercooled. WIsh someone would come out with decent Vmem blocks, too.
 
Errr. chipset first before GPU block? It DOESN"T matter how you order things in inline cooling. Time to revisit the good old how do watercooling 101 again for sure on that one.
For time being, I put my chipset on zalman passive cooler with 50mm fan that blows 15cfm. Amazingly, temp of that thing is hovering 36c (ambient is 25c) during heavy loading. When you do get to extremeties of overclocking, that few degree do matter more than what most of people realize here. I wonder what the stock tiny heatsink's temp were alike (cringe). For time being, unless active cooling is involved, I think I need to stick to current chispet cooling method as GPU chipset loop water temp under heavy usage will not grant too good of temperature on chipset itself.
 
DD 6800 GT on own dual 120mm heater core
420core 115mem
32c ambient air in my case card sits 44c idle / underload ambient 36c card sits 48c
one bad thing water is shared with cpu(meets in the same res) so if you had a separate res maybe cut down on the temps
sideopen.jpg
 
I have decided to go with the Swiftech MCW50 GPU block which I got for 25$ shipped off of anandtech. I had to purchase a 6800 fiting kit though, which ran another 15$ shipped. From what I have read

So a 6800 GPU water cooling solution for 40$ shipped. Performance for the money, I beleive this is the best option.
 
yeah, for $40 thats a really good deal. My Fusion HL was a lot, came out to like $80 shipped, but IMO it was totally worth it. Dropped temps a whopping 36*C from the stock cooler!

I am going to maintain the position that your video memory doesnt need active cooling, as it simply doesnt get hot enough. Just look at the cooling that is provided for the x800 and 6800 cards. The x800 has no cooling on the mem, active or passive, and the 6800 has a dinky aluminum cooler that honestly doesnt preform too well by itself. However, as I said before, your memory generally tops itself out ovreclocking-wise before heat becomes an issue, thus the lack of great stock cooling. Therefore, you dont need to activly cool your memory.

I mean, yes, if you have a heatsink on it, we are going to assume that you do have SOME fans in your case, and there is air moving throughout it. So if you are going for a 100% silent rig, I guess just the HS isnt your best option here. But if, like most normal people, you have some air moving throughout your computer and can stand the little noise those fans make, then just go with the heatsinks instead of the DD block. As I have mentioned, the DD block dumps that extra heat of the video memory into your loop, which simply isnt necessary for a better overclock. You will get at MOST, if anything, 10-20 extra mhz on the ram with the DD block instead of some OCZ copper HS's. Now are those extra 10-20 mhz worth all that extra heat, resulting in worse gpu and cpu temps, along with the large pricetag of the DD block? Well, thats for you to decide, but in my opinion, it is not.
 
jinu117 said:
Errr. chipset first before GPU block? It DOESN"T matter how you order things in inline cooling. Time to revisit the good old how do watercooling 101 again for sure on that one.
For time being, I put my chipset on zalman passive cooler with 50mm fan that blows 15cfm. Amazingly, temp of that thing is hovering 36c (ambient is 25c) during heavy loading. When you do get to extremeties of overclocking, that few degree do matter more than what most of people realize here. I wonder what the stock tiny heatsink's temp were alike (cringe). For time being, unless active cooling is involved, I think I need to stick to current chispet cooling method as GPU chipset loop water temp under heavy usage will not grant too good of temperature on chipset itself.
Click to expand...

It's entirely possible that we just have different experience, yours being that the water reaches an equilibrium and maintains a temperature within the system, whereas in my system there's a considerable differential between temperatures of different parts of the loop. Chances are it won't make difference what order his blocks are in, but if it's ok with you, it may or may not make a difference in someone else's system.
 
Even if the water reaches equilibruim, which it does, the water is slightly colder after it comes out of the radiator. FACT> DEAL WITH IT. I see way too many posts saying possitioning doesnt matter. Well for the most part it is true, but the facts are its only like .02 c cooler out of the radiator than the line going in. So yes possitioning does matter, however not very much.
 
SledgeMakeGood said:
It's entirely possible that we just have different experience, yours being that the water reaches an equilibrium and maintains a temperature within the system, whereas in my system there's a considerable differential between temperatures of different parts of the loop. Chances are it won't make difference what order his blocks are in, but if it's ok with you, it may or may not make a difference in someone else's system.
Click to expand...


Actually the placement of the blocks really does have NO effect on the cooling whatsoever. The water in the system raises maybe only a few degrees throughout the system. The specific heat of water is nearly constant between 20 and 50C. Therefore there is really no change in the ability of the water to cool the components, no matter what order they are in. The biggest effect of adding a water block is the added restriction, which means decreased flow, which means poorer overall system cooling.

The order of the blocks really, does not matter.

Read This to learn some fluid dynamics on watercooling
 
Erasmus354 said:
Actually the placement of the blocks really does have NO effect on the cooling whatsoever. The water in the system raises maybe only a few degrees throughout the system. The specific heat of water is nearly constant between 20 and 50C. Therefore there is really no change in the ability of the water to cool the components, no matter what order they are in. The biggest effect of adding a water block is the added restriction, which means decreased flow, which means poorer overall system cooling.

The order of the blocks really, does not matter.

Read This to learn some fluid dynamics on watercooling
Click to expand...

I've read that site, and it's very good for watercoolers. It does simplify the equation, because the other variables don't change on the scale we work in. Sufficed to say, I agree and my post about block order was wrong for anything less than arguments' sake alone. It's still not "NO difference whatsoever", because, while it IS negligible, it's still there in my head as an engineer who can't leave anything out ; ).
 
Shit!!!!


I just read further and the MCW50 is 1/2 OD.

So it comes with 1/2 fittings, but this block will pose a serious bottleneck in my loop won't it?

Should I sell this off and get a true 1/2 ID block so as to not hurt the performance of my loop?

Anyone have a 3/8 setup and want this block?
 
Toad21 said:
Shit!!!!


I just read further and the MCW50 is 1/2 OD.

So it comes with 1/2 fittings, but this block will pose a serious bottleneck in my loop won't it?

Should I sell this off and get a true 1/2 ID block so as to not hurt the performance of my loop?

Anyone have a 3/8 setup and want this block?
Click to expand...

Not I . But I still recomend the Danger Den 6800 block and it is a true 1/2 inch inner diameter piece. I also would have to say that it is superior to other card cooler for this card. Lots of copper, great flow and nice looking.

The Captin
 
I use swiftec block with stock ram heatsink with a vantec card cooler below it.

And the Swiftec fitting size does not damper the performance at all, I have a 1/2 ID system.

P4 3.0
6800 Ultra OC to 475core 1.16 mem

I get 35C on 6800U and 22C on P4

db-temps.jpg


72-OC.jpg
 
im looking into watercooling my 6800 ultra .. nb .. and 3.4 p4 ..

i take it that a single 120mm fan rad wont handle it ?? or do i have to go to dual 120 rad ???

thanks
 
I like my Innovatek block. Its very slim, which is good. The DD block is far too big to fit with my chipset block. I also dont like how the DD block looks...

Id rather have a Aqua block though, but at the time.. it wasnt out.
 
So my MCW50 had 1/2 id barb elbows and they leaked when you bent them more than like 10 degrees. So I have to go with some else. What is this aqua block you speak of? I need 1/2 ID thanks.
 
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