Beta Orionis – Part XIII

• Beta Orionis
• Beta Orionis – Part II: New fans
• Beta Orionis – Part III
• Beta Orionis – Part IV
• Beta Orionis – Part V
• Beta Orionis – Part VI
• Beta Orionis – Part VII
• Beta Orionis – Part VIII: Delays
• Beta Orionis – Part IX
• Beta Orionis – Part X
• Beta Orionis – Part XI
• Beta Orionis – Part XII
• Beta Orionis – Part XIII
• Beta Orionis – Part XIV
• Beta Orionis – Part XV: Follow-up with Koolance blocks
• Beta Orionis – Part XVI: Overclocking the GPUs (or not)
• Beta Orionis – Part XVII: The AX860
• Beta Orionis – Part XVIII: New power supply and quieting things down
• Beta Orionis – Part XIX: Taking it outside
• Beta Orionis – Part XX: New loop
• Beta Orionis – Part XXI
• Beta Orionis – Part XXII
• Beta Orionis – Part XXIII
• Beta Orionis – Part XXIV
• Radiator box for PC water cooling
• Beta Orionis – Part XXV
• Corsair AX860: A retraction
• Mira

I remounted the Koolance water block, but the temperature differential still continues.

Now when originally running Unigine’s benchmarking tools after putting together the loop in parallel, I noted that there was a good 10C difference in temperatures between the cards — see Part XI for details. Changing to series didn’t change the differential much. So I remounted the block with fresh thermal pads and fresh IC Diamond, and it improved the differential in Unigine’s tools, but that was the only place I saw the difference.

In Bioshock Infinite with ultra settings, though, the differential was very pronounced. And worse was the temperature the card reached while I was playing. First, my setup: I have the video outputting to a 32″ 1080p television — namely a Toshiba L2400 — through HDMI.

On performance, I’ll let CPUID’s HWMonitor paint the picture.

A 23C difference in temperature between the cards, with the hottest card reaching 77C. On water. It’s reaching 77C on water.

Now they came back down to around 30C within a couple minutes of shutting down the game. But when a Kraken G10 with an all-in-one cooler performs significantly better than a near full-cover water block, there’s a concern that needs to be alleviated. Now when running Bioshock Infinite during the Kraken G10 testing, I didn’t have it running nearly as long as I did before capturing the above screenshot, but I don’t think it would’ve gotten nearly as high — the temperatures still reached 60C in under 20 minutes with the Koolance block.

So this tells me one of two things: either the card is the concern, or the block is the concern. Given the card that is getting the hotter temperature is the one I previously had mounted into a Kraken G10, I’m thinking the block is the problem.

So what other options are available? Well the only ones I’m seeing are Watercool’s Heatkiller GPU-X³, the XS-PC Razor, and EK FC-680. EK is just a bit too expensive, in my opinion, and I tend to go for the best performance value I can find. It’s why I went with Koolance on the CPU — and I’m not complaining at all about the performance I’m getting from it — but I am thoroughly disappointed with the GTX 680 waterblock.

So which am I going with? I’ve decided to try the Heatkiller block, namely because FrozenCPU had it for $75, plus another $25 for the back plate. Performance-PCs had the block for $115 and another $37 for the back plate. Plus the discount code pretty much eliminated the shipping.

In the mean time, I’ll just need to watch the temperatures if I play anything relatively intense, like Bioshock Infinite.