Legit Reviews

Anyone here use any Koolance gear? What's your impressions. I'm about ready to take the plunge and start ordering parts but I want to get some feedback first.

This article on thier website about thier aluminum radiators vs. "copper" ones was pretty interesting but I wonder about it's validity. It appears they used a couple Danger Den Black Ice radiators for thier comparison.

no, they use 3/8 tubing you want 1/2 tubing. Look at Swiftech kits, or build your own. 150-200 will get you a great cooling kit

dicecca112 wrote:no, they use 3/8 tubing you want 1/2 tubing. Look at Swiftech kits, or build your own. 150-200 will get you a great cooling kit

There's nothing wrong with 3/8 tubing!
It's all about having parts that complement each other, be it with 1/2inch or 3/8 inch tubing.

Yes if the block is designed for 3/8 and not for 1/2 and just adapted. I would rather see him with a Apogee GT block, so if he decides to upgrade to Quad in the future he can handle the heat.

And how exactly do I fit all of that in my case?

With some Dicecca magic

While 1/2" will be better than 3/8" there's not a whole lot of difference in them, and the 3/8" tubing allows slightly more space in your case for routing it.

Dan

that would be beaker magic.

check that out. That's what I've done in the bast

http://forums.legitreviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=8978

For reasons gone over in my other post I cannot mount a radiator to the back of my case. I had wanted to use a Koolance system for quite some time but thier Exos systems made me nervous of a hose coming loose durring transport. Thier all in one systems were to deep to fit my case.

That was until recently. Now they make an Aluminum shroud to be used as a spacer. So here's my parts list so far:

Koolance EHX-1000BK radiator and fan assembly.
Koolance Aluminum Riser Shroud
Koolance RP-1000 Res/Pump

You'll get good performance with the 3/8" Koolance stuff, the differance between 3/8" and 1/2" is only a degree or 2 at the most. And with that triple radiator on top, you can expect some real nice temps.

I'd be willing to bet that the performance between the Koolance setup and my rig using a Thermochill PA120.3 and Swiftech parts is minimal at best..........

Excellent. Now I need to figure out which coolers to use. Any recommendations?

The Koolance (new one) seems to be pretty good, but right now the APOGEE GT and D-Tek are the top blocks out right now, and both perform very well with 3/8" tubing.

You recommend them for both Northbridge/Southbridge cooling as well as CPU cooling?

Actually I don't recomend water cooling the chipsets at all, a good passive or air cooled heat sink is more than enough. Chipset water cooling only lowers the performance of the cooling loop and you can get just as good results with air with a low speed fan. I've never water cooled a chipset before, just never saw the need myself, but if you're looking for total silance, get a set that's designed to work together.

I ask as my chipset is the hotest thing in my case right now at a balmy 50C.

Get one of these

ZALMAN FB123
It attaches to your case (pci slots), add a low rpm 120mm fan and it will cool your chipset, ram, gfx and power circuitry

I don't want that hideous thing in my case. If I'm spending the money to water cool, I'm spending the money to water cool. Besides, where exactly is it pulling the air from?

Skippman wrote:I don't want that hideous thing in my case. If I'm spending the money to water cool, I'm spending the money to water cool. Besides, where exactly is it pulling the air from?

I don't have a case window, so I don't care how my rig looks. Performance is all I care about ;) You should have a front intake fan on your case, the zalman just blows air onto your board...you don't need much to keep things in-check.
I have watercooled my old nForce4 board. while I could bump up the voltages alot, it done nothing for me. The only reason I watercooled that board was because of the placement of the chipset. I couldn't add a large Heatsink and I hate noisy PC's!

I use a Noctua NC-U6 combined with a low speed Delta 60mm fan, no heat problems here............

B-H,

Hey, it's been awhile since I've seen any pictures of your current rig. That's a nice picture showing the passive cooler on the chipset.

So far, the chipsets are not pushing the heat like the CPUs are. However, some are getting up there. The biggest threat to heat up are the GPUs today.

Stev

I can only go by what my BIOS is reporting and it's got my motherboard temp at 50C while the proc runs a cool 40C under full load. And that's non overclocked. I'm concerned that once I start ramping up the FSB it's gonna get toasty in there.