Test system and setup
You already know the structure well enough. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, I will once again list the most important key points. As always, I rely on the central lab cooling with the chiller and another expansion tank (a total of almost 20 liters of water). Aqua Computer’s DP Ultra is used, which is filtered on a rotational basis. The water temperature is kept at a constant 20 °C, which greatly simplifies the determination of absolute temperatures and deltas. The internal GPU diode measures the chip temperature reliably from about 19 °C, but it quickly becomes inaccurate below that. Room temperature and water temperature are thus also approximately the same, which avoids dangerous condensate.
Temperatures are recorded using an engineering tool for the GPU diode and the substrate temperature of the GDDR6X (hotspot) and using a calibrated, high-resolution industrial camera for infrared measurements. The PI640 from Optris with a normal focal length is used here. The camera has a 640 x 480 pixel bolometer to capture thermal radiation. For the evaluation, I record a radiometric video, which I can also read out later at will.
| Test System and Equipment |
|
|---|---|
| Case: |
Banchetto 101 (modified) |
| Monitor: | Alphacool Ice Age 2000 Chiller, 20l additional reservoir |
| Power Consumption: |
Oscilloscope-based system: Non-contact direct current measurement on PCIe slot (riser card) Non-contact direct current measurement at the external PCIe power supply Direct voltage measurement at the respective connectors and at the power supply unit 2x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500 MHz multichannel oscilloscope with memory function 4x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50, current clamp adapter (1 mA to 30 A, 100 KHz, DC) 4x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355, probe (10:1, 500 MHz) 1x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012, HiRes digital multimeter with memory function MCU-based shunt measuring (own build, Powenetics software) NVIDIA PCAT and FrameView 1.1 |
| Thermal Imager: |
1x Optris PI640 Pix Connect Software Type K Class 1 thermal sensors (up to 4 channels) |
| OS: | Windows 11 Pro (all updates) |
Now the cooler has to prove itself! I let the cooler sweat at exactly 450 watts in the MSI combustor for an hour in the slightly regulated cycle with about 100 l/h. You have to allow yourself this time, because only after a longer period of time will all areas of the board really be completely warmed up. Then measure for about 10 minutes and determine the average temperature.
First, let’s look at the IR control values. The board temperature on the back already allows good conclusions about the component temperatures, even though deviations naturally still occur here due to the thermal resistance or hot tracks in and on the board (especially in the GPU area). Let’s first consider the starting point of the measurement when the load is applied.
After two hours, of course, the picture has changed completely. And we can also see that the ample 40 degrees of the areas where the backplate pads normally sit is also nothing that would require their use at all. That also sweats out so.
Now let’s move on to the temperature measurement. You can live with a delta of 24 Kelvin between the water and the GPU, but you still miss the highest Boost step, since you would need temperatures around 40 °C for that. Compared to the possible maximum, one loses perhaps 30 to 45 MHz, which can easily be tolerated. The temperatures of the storage and voltage converter are good to very good. In terms of GPU temperature, Watercool is still almost 1 Kelvin ahead of Alphacool and Corsair and a bit more clearly ahead of EKWB.
The memory is even coolest on average with Alphacool, the rest of the values of the Heatkiller V Pro are mostly higher than with Corsair and Alphacool but still significantly lower than with EKWB. So we see that the advantage in the GPU (immensely important) is somewhat relativized in the voltage converters (rather unimportant). Despite narrowly missing the maximum target of about 40 °C for the GPU (Edge) by about 3 to 4 Kelvin, a clock of 2715 to 2730 MHz is very often present in Cyberpunk 2077 even after complete warming. Up to 41 °C it was even 2760 to 2775 MHz.
For comparison: the air-cooled card only manages around 2580 MHz as an average here (whereby the clock fluctuates extremely). Almost 200 MHz more clock for free are certainly not bad. The gaming performance increases by around 2 to 3 percent, while the power consumption in gaming even decreases by around 5 watts. In fact, all four coolers are on a similar level here, with EK’s cooler scoring slightly worse. The other three operate absolutely on a par, which is pleasing from the customer’s point of view.
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