Swiftech H20-8500 Water Cooling Kit w/ GPU Block

[Brian]

"Today we will be taking a look at Swiftech's H20-8500 water cooling kit. If you don't know who Swiftech is, then you better have a good excuse. Swiftech is leading the pack in cooling solutions. They produce very high quality heatsinks and water cooling products. Thanks to Swiftech, we have the H20-8500 with CPU and VGA block. The aim of this kit is to cool the CPU and graphics card while maintaining low sound levels and the ability to install it easily in just about any case."

Check it out here:

http://www.thetechlounge.com/review.php?REVIEWDIR=swiftech_h20_8500

[handrail]

so far i have not been terribly impressed by water cooling. my vantec aeroflow stays around 40 during gaming and below 34 at idle.

i'm sure there are great h20 coolers out there for the big $$$$. but thus far, nothing has convinced me to make the switch.

[MaNiAk21]

Well, there's a big difference between the performance of a kit and the performance of your custom system... it does cost more, but if you get the right items, the cooling should be amazing...

[handrail]

yeah, i understand that if i spend mega bux i can get ultra cool, ultra quiet machine. but, if the cheap ones run ~$200-300 and my cheap old $25 vantec can beat the kit water coolers, why are companies bothering making them.

my guess is because they are hoping to get that "it's cool to have watercooling" (bad pun, groan :cry: ) section of the market. but, most everyone who would use liquid cooling surely knows not to buy a crap kit.

just an observation on the industry. seems like they are wasting time and money...but someone must be buying these things...right???

[MaNiAk21]

It's just the quiet issue that comes to play, some are perfectly fine with shelling out cash for ultra-quiet, entry-level cooling. I for one would not, but there are a lot of people out there with cash to burn...

[Hippy]

i am a little curious about your temp readings.

The difference in degrees C between the kit without the GPU block compaired to with is massive: 5c at idle.

Guessing that these are CPU readings?

That is a bit much... i mean to warm any amount of water by even a single degree takes a load of wattage/heat. I dont know the exact calculation but have read in other forums that the temps shouldn't raise by much, if at all by adding a GPU block. Hmmm (if i can find the thread then i'll link it) just seems wrong, could anything be wrong with the kit?

Cracking review though :)

[T-shirt]

I just quick scanned the review (no time today, I'll get back to it, I promise)
But I would guess the difference is caused by several factors.
Rad is too small, unable to deal with the extra heat,

addition of the gpu block is slowing the flow below the needed flow for the CPU block

error- in adding the gpu block you changed the CPU block/paste/cpu interface to a slightly less effective combo

[Brian]

The card that we tested with emits a LOT of heat. It can get in to the 60s ( ~temp read by probe on back of card (opposite of core)).

Since the radiator can't dissipate alot of heat, adding the GPU block caused the temps to increase alot (especially since the GPU gets hotter than the CPU in this case). With the 120mm radiator, you will notice no change in the CPU temp when adding the VGA block to the loop.