After the initial installation the water block was immediately removed and the contact area was inspected. After loosening the nuts and removing the brace, I proceeded to lift the block off the core. There was a very strong suction force, and as the block couldn’t be wiggled about, I had to rock it to the left and right a few times before I could lift it straight off.
The thermal paste was well spread out; contact was like nothing I had ever seen before! Not only could you clearly see the ATI logo and lettering on the core, it was also “imprinted” into the base of the block.
For the overclocking tests, I used the latest ATITool 0.25 Beta 16 pre 8.
The thermal diode integrated in the X800GT's core was used to obtain temperatures. Load temperatures were measured after one hour of ATITool's artifact scan test, idle temperatures after one hour of Windows desktop.
The fan on the X800GT varies its speeds according to temperature - to obtain "dynamic fan" values, I let the card adjust the fan speed on its own. For "fan 100%", I used ATITool to force the speed to 100%.
The waterblock was tested with the following water loop:
Eheim HPPS Plus
Black Ice Xtreme II with 2 Sunon 7W fans
Alphacool Nexxxos CPU block
Danger Den Maze 5 GPU block
The fans were controlled by a Zalman ZM-MFC1. On the low setting, I adjusted the variable resistors to their greatest resistance. When testing with both fans at 100%, I set the Zalman's variable resistors to their lowest resistance value.
Because I used Arctic Silver Ceramique, I gave the paste three days of gaming in order for it to settle and achieve maximum performance.
I decided to leave the CPU block in the loop, as very few people build water cooling loops for their GPU only. This helped to simulate a real-life environment.
Radeon X800 GT PCI-E
Maximum Core Clock
Temperature Load
Temperature Idle
Stock cooler - dynamic fan
589 MHz
68°C
51°C
Stock cooler - fan 100%
602 MHz
69°C
48°C
Thermaltake W2 – fan low
610 MHz
35°C
30°C
Thermaltake W2 - fan 100%
614 MHz
32°C
30°C
Thermaltake W2 - fan 100% 1.5V GPU voltage
635 MHz
41°C
33°C
DD Maze 5 - fan low
640 MHz
34°C
29°C
DD Maze 5 - fan 100%
648 MHz
32°C
28°C
DD Maze 5 - fan 100% 1.5V GPU voltage
660 MHz
32°C
28°C
The graphs speak for themselves – the DD Maze 5 is simply astonishing! At low fan settings, it offers better cooling performance than the TT block, at a 30 MHz (!) higher core clock.
If you’re not impressed yet, then maybe the following will change your opinion.
Restriction testing:
Flow without any GPU block
0.182 m³/h
Flow with Thermaltake W2
0.076 m³/h
Flow with DD Maze 5
0.140 m³/h
The Danger Den Maze 5 is 2x less restrictive than the Thermaltake W2, yet it offers better performance. This goes to show that a higher restriction waterblock will not necessarily perform better than a low restriction one.
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