Follow up review: Influence of coolant flow on water cooling loop performance (Core i7 multi-block setup)
By Daz, April 23, 2010
Introduction
In this follow-up review we continued to look into temperature changes dynamics with changing coolant flow (pump speed), but this time on Core i7 system with multiple water cooling blocks installed.
1. Lab system setup
For this review we have used Intel’s Core i7 920 based system overclocked to 3.99Ghz and set for 100% CPU load with OCCT program.
- Processor: Intel Core i7 920, Rev D0
- Main board: Gigabyte X58 Extreme
- Memory : 3x 2Gb OCZ 7-7-7-16 1.7v
- Graphic card: 2x XFX GTX285 Rev 1
- Hard drive : 2 x 1T Seagate 7200rpm
- Power Supply: Corsair 1000W
- Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
Overclocking BIOS specs:
- Multiplier @ 20
- QPI x36
- Clock @ 190
- Turbo Mode
- VCore @ 1.4625v
- VTT @ 1.235v
- RAM @ 1.7v, Auto timing
Water cooling specs:
Our water cooling setup is a multi-block (6 blocks total) loop with internally mounted radiator with six fans attached in push-pull position.
- Radiator: Feser TFC360 High Performance Radiator
- Fans: 6x GELID Gamer 1500rpm
- CPU block: EK Supreme Classic with Copper Top mod
- GPU blocks: EK Fullcover GTX285 Plexi-Nickel
- Chipset blocks: EK GA-X58 (3 blocks total)
- Pump: D5 vario speed with EK D5 X-Top Rev.2
- Tubing: TFC 3/8”ID hose
- Reservoir: EK Multi-Res 150
- Coolant: Feser One UV Acid Green
Sensors and instruments:
In our test for each fixed fans speed we measured CPU cores temperatures, air temperature before entering radiator and after exiting radiator, coolant temperature before entering CPU block and after exiting CPU block. Each speed setting was run for 1 hour starting from 3000rpm speed.
- Koolance TMS-200 Management board
- Koolance Coolant Temperature Sensor
- Koolance FM-16 Flow Meter
- CPU Stress Program: OCCT 3.1.0
- CPU-Z 1.54
- Core Temp 0.99.5.27
2. Test Results
Cores average temperature was recordeed from 5th to 1st speed settings on the Swiftech 655-01 water pump.
3. Test Notes
After recording very small temperature changes between min and max pump's speed settings of Core i5 single CPU loop, we have decided to follow up with the same kind of test on a fully water cooled Core i7 system.
With our new setup the max flow dropped from 3.8LPM to 3.2LPM due to restriction from five additional blocks. As overclocked Core i7 runs considerably hotter then overclocked i5 our options were limited. Unfortunately available silent setup has slow fans, and we were not able to run multiple runs with different fan speeds, because we hit uncomfortable 80c at maximum RPMs.
This time around temperatures grew at steady pace with each slower speed setting. The larger difference between min and max speed definitely makes a case for paying more attention to your flow rate within a fully loaded system.
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