Performance (Cont’d)
System Testing

The two Koolance waterblocks were tested on a red-hot Presler 955 CPU and NVIDIA 8800 GTX video card.  The ambient room air temperature was maintained at 23C +/-0.5C.  The CPU was loaded by running multiple instances of CPUBurn and the GPU was loaded by running Real-time HDR IBL (rthdribl.exe) at 1600×1200.

Koolance CPU-330 and VID-282 Waterblock Review - Cases and Cooling 42

•    Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI Intel edition motherboard
•    Pentium Extreme Edition dual core 955 (3.46 GHz at 1.22 Vcore)
•    SilverStone Olympia 750 watt PSU
•    (2) Corsair CM2X512-8000UL  DDR RAM
•    NVIDIA 8800GTX 768 MB 575/900 video card
•    WD1200JD SATA HDD
•    Sony 16X DVD
•    Windows XP Pro with SP2
•    Forceware 162.18 drivers

The water-cooling system included the following components.
•    Custom reservoir (500ml)
•    D-Tek dB-1 inline pump
•    (2) Copper tube and aluminum fin heat exchangers (5”x7”x1”)
•    (2) 120mm Panaflo L1A fans in custom shrouds
•    3/8” ID Tygon R-3603 tubing
•    Koolance liquid coolant additive

Tests were conducted with the radiator cooling fans running at Hi (12V) and Low (5V) speeds using the following configurations:
•    Idle: Both CPU and GPU at idle
•    CPU load only (GPU at idle)
•    GPU load only (CPU at idle)
•    Both CPU and GPU fully loaded

The following data is presented for comparative purposes only.  Your actual results may be different depending on the variables unique to your system (CPU, GPU, overclock, ambient temperature, case air flow, temperature monitoring, etc). 

Koolance CPU-330 and VID-282 Waterblock Review - Cases and Cooling 43

Amb – Ambient air temperature measured with a thermocouple
H2O – Reservoir water temperature (digital thermometer)
Tc – Temperature obtained with calibrated thermocouple attached to IHS
Delta T – Fully loaded Tc temperature rise above ambient air temperature
dBA – Sound pressure level recorded 3’ away (background 29 dBA)

Koolance CPU-330 and VID-282 Waterblock Review - Cases and Cooling 44

Amb – Ambient air temperature measured with a thermocouple
GPU – GPU temperature reported by Everest utility using onboard sensor
Mem – Video RAM temperature reported by Everest utility using onboard sensor
Env – Video card environmental temperature reported by Everest

Loading both Presler cores with multiple instances of CPUBurn, while using the stock Intel HSF, resulted in significant thermal throttling of the CPU to prevent core meltdown.  However, with the Koolance CPU-330 installed, the CPU cores ran much cooler, so no thermal throttling was necessary and the processors were able to run at a constant 100% load. 

The Koolance CPU-330 cooling block lowered full load CPU temperatures by more than 25°C with essentially the same noise as the stock air cooler.  The 8800 GTX video card also ran significantly cooler with the VID-282 cooling block as compared to the stock air cooler.  In fact the GPU full load temperatures while being water-cooled with the Koolance waterblock were virtually the same as the idle temperatures on air.  Very kool!

One of the big advantages of using waterblocks to cool the CPU and video card(s) is that most of the waste heat can potentially be transported outside the PC enclosure and dissipated by an external cooling unit, which can help lower internal case temperatures significantly.

Overall, the two Koolance waterblocks delivered excellent cooling performance with this setup.  Obviously the type of liquid cooling system you use (pumps, radiator, fans, etc.) will ultimately affect the performance but if all else is equal, the CPU-330 and VID-282 cooling blocks will perform right up there with the best waterblocks on the market.


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