Nubius' "Unofficial" Bigwater Review *56kers Beware..Big Pics*

[Nubius]

Nubius' "Unofficial" Bigwater Review

Aright some of you have known that I ordered the bigwater a week or so ago. Well, as I pretty much always expect the machine didn't boot first try. I had swapped one particular RAM stick from slot 1 to 2 so I figured that stick just needed to be resat......nope..still error beep...I reseat the video card and remove that one stick...still beep.... finally I found out it was the damn RAM stick in the 3rd slot that needed to be resat..mind you I didn't even touch that one...blah..anyway it's up and running.

Couple things to note:

I purchased a seperate radiator for a total of 2 so this isn't the stock bigwater per se. I also constructed the Rads so that they fit together and put a 3rd 120mm fan on the front.

Here's basically what my radiators look like:

http://www.27thavenue.com/images/radiators.jpg

Mind you that is a pic before I added the 3rd 120mm fan, so just picture another one up there at the front.

I also removed my rear exhaust fan and that's where my hoses and power cords go through (althought thermaltake does provide a PCI slot thing for the tubes to safely pass through)

My side panel is also off.

So I have my rear exhaust gone, the side panel off, and a little home made type radiator set up.

Now I know you're all wanting the goods so here it is.

Air Setup:

35w 2400+ XP-M OC'd to 2.5GHz 200x12 - 1.875 Vcore
32C Idle - 41C Full Load


Bigwater Setup:
35w 2400+ XP-M OC'd to 2.5GHz 200x12 - 1.875 Vcore
31C Idle - 44C Load

Needless to say I'm a bit disappointed. Not only is stock bigwater supposed to be cooler than air, but I've also added a 2nd radiator with two more fans.

The AS5 needs time to settle in, and the things like no rear exhaust, and the fact that with 2 120mm's pushing and only one pulling, leads me to believe I either need to move one 120mm to the back to pull, or get a 4th one...which I'll probably do, and make that pull so the air can move freely instead of getting stuck in the middle like I think it's doing.

So there are a couple things to take in such as the AS5, lack of one fan, and the possibility of air not moving through the rad set up like it should.

So there's a few things I can try, but overall I really shouldn't even have to do them. The stock bigwater should give me better temps than air, muchless with an extra rad and an extra fan.

I'll try to get some pics of the setup tomorrow.

The only positive note is that, it is much quiter than my setup with the tornado., even with the tornado down at half power. It's more of a white noise hum than a high pitched whine.

So yeah I'm a bit disappointed as I'm sure most would be One person even said I probably set the bar too high formyself being that it's just a starters kit basically and I say they were right.

Granted this is giving me temps that normally took a solid copper SLK-900A and vantec tornado, plus many case fans....so if you're going from stock cooler, or a case with not that many fans and not the greatest heatsink no doubt you'll see better temps.

However, Mike, has better temps than me with his monsterous Tower heatsink and 2 tornados, but after a while I got tired of one tornado muchless two.

Soo yeah....Don't know what to tell you guys beyond that.

I'm going to get another 120mm, put my rear exhaust back...if I can with the hoses in the way, reverse my front bay fans to intakes instead of exhaust...and give the AS5 time to settle in.

Perhaps it just wants a diff configuration than the air...who knows.

I'll be sure to update this thread with any new 'findings'

T-T-T-T-That's all folks.

- Nubius

 

[Nubius]

Jerry rigged my rear exhaust, turned my front bay fans to intakes, and I lowered my Vcore down to 1.825 and it's now sitting 39C full load. A nice 5C from a rather minimal Vcore drop.

I still want to get another 120mm though, and see if that effects it and also give the AS5 time to set in.

 

[jaksback]

psht not taking ANY of my suggestions earlier huh? bleh

 

[Nubius]

Psht, what suggestions..everything you said was either a temporary solution or involved completely taking it back apart which just aint gonna happen.

Updated Info:

26C Idle - 39C Full load.

 

[mike11973]

Nubius...I think its doing what is should as said considering it really is a Starter kit....Keep in mind that one of the major selling points to my purchasing the tower over the bigwater at the moment was the fact that on the one review it performed only 2c higher than the dangerden rbx watercooling!! I thought it was pretty impressive. The MAJOR benny to going h2o is the fact that it is pretty much silent in comparison to air cooling. I think the one thing that will make the biggest difference will be a pump capable of moving the water at a faster rate thus increasing the cooling....I think a good analogy would be comparing the flow rate of the water to that of a fan....the faster and more powerfull the fan coupled with a good quality heatsink the better the cooling....thus the faster the h2o transfer is coupled also with a quality heatblock and radiator the better the thermal transfer will be as well. Its definitely not vapochill or phase change but then again it doesnt cost a grand either....lol....all and considering I feel it did what it is intended to. I'm not 100% sure the 2nd rad is really doing anything at this point untill the fan and more importantly the flow situation is worked out. That is just my 2cents on it and in no way am I any kind of expert....hey you may want to resourse some real experts just to see what they say?

 

[Nubius]

Well I pretty much came to the conclusion it's doing arount what it should. Most reviews I read (and I read like 10+ different ones lol) were written a year or more ago...so during that time the top 'air setup' may not have been the same as todays standards. With that I've come to the conclusion that my thermaltake SLK-900A was indeed a very good heatsink and coupled with the Vantec Tornado made for excellent air temps at the trade of having a really loud whiney system.

This system is indeed quieter, and I've ordered a 4th 120mm fan to put on the back that's actuall 3CFM more than the front so there should definitely be more air flow for that.

lol unfortunately with the addition of these fans come even more noise albeit it a more low hum than whiney sound, but I need to hook up the 120mms to my fan controller so I can turn them down from time to time thus making it near silent operation.

For a cheap kit I gotta give it it's credit in that I invesnted a lot in a good heatsink, powerful fan and whatnot with air, and I haven't done the same with water..only have put in a small amount.

I'm sittin at 27C idle while I write this, and no doubt with this AS5 setting in it'll drop hopefully a couple degrees. I've lowered my Vcore to 1.8 even so that helps too.

Atleast I have the experience now and know more along the lines what to do.

I'm pretty sure if I asked the experts they would simply tell me this is about normal especially considering it's not 'high end' parts

The copper block is rather nice though, so I wonder how much difference it would actually make between a danger den block.

I want to get a 6600GT before I start pumping more into the water cooling, but I think the next things for the water cooling would be the Swiftech pump, about $75 which is 300GPH+ and some thicker tubing. Don't think I'll go 1/2" inch though as maneuverability in the system would be quite hard.

And hell I may get another rad too haha, we'll see down the road.

Pretty good analogy though BTW, regarding the water and the air.

 

[Sui]

Just a suggestion, you could use temp sensors to see just how everything is working, place them before and after waterblock, rad, ect. It could be rads not displacing enough heat or the waterblock not absorbing enough, maybe not enough flow too. It looks like you had pretty respectable results, theres only so much heat you can pull away with a waterblock

 

[Nubius]

Yeah, itd require buyin a few thermal probes which the cheapest I saw was like $15 so I don't think I'm going to get to that.

But yeah I assume these results are about right on par with a budget kit.

theres only so much heat you can pull away with a waterblock

that too, I need the water to be much colder so it'll want to actually cool the block and not so much just carry the heat away

 

[Alex81388]

Hey, even if it didn't work as you planned... This still sets you up in the future if you plan on getting a more serious kit. And you still got good results, I would LOVE to have those temps.

 

[Sui]

Actually I thought of something after I went to bed, you could use a thermo-electric cooler. They kind of fell out of the lime light a few years ago, but it might just be enough to get you to a lower cpu temp. There was a lunatic who actually stacked a bunch of them together and managed to get to sub zero temps.

They kind of fell out of use because with programs like cpu idle/rain it cooled the cpu until condensation would form, many ways around the problem though. There are programs designed to keep your cpu warm, and some of the coolers actually had shutoffs at certain temps. They also would fail, then insulate the cpu from the heatsink, burning up the cpu, but those were mainly the cheap ones.

Edit: I think they were called thermo-electric coolers, I actually saw one at frys about a week ago, looks like a thin little plate with wires coming out.