GeForce GTX 285 On Water Cooling: Zotac's Infinity Edition

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It would be better if we could see how well the zotac overclocked card overclocked.. In other words pushed to the limits.
 
54 deg C above ambient for W/C 285GTX makes no sense.
The temperature of my 8800GTS 512 running GPU at 800Mhz (from 650MHz) + W/C southbridge and 2 X 120 Radiator. My rig maxes out at 27 Deg C above ambient.
 
[citation][nom]gothminst3r[/nom]54 deg C above ambient for W/C 285GTX makes no sense. The temperature of my 8800GTS 512 running GPU at 800Mhz (from 650MHz) + W/C southbridge and 2 X 120 Radiator. My rig maxes out at 27 Deg C above ambient.[/citation]

Perhaps the chosen liquid cooling system doesn't have enough pressure.
 
Wow! Was this supposed to fool us into thinking they knew anything about watercooling... this arcticle is a joke. Why does the water cooled card not get overclocked, while on the same token, the "air" card gets overclocked the hell out of.

This is obviously not the limit of water cooling, it's either the product of a very lame product, or the testers ignorance of water setups.
 
I wonder why you bothered doing this article? As we can all agree this card only makes sense if you plan on putting it in a very tight place, or have 2-3 of them in a chassis. So why didn't you request 3 cards and compare it to a standard 3 card setup? The interesting thing would be to see if it actually helps enough to make a 3sli setup doable longterm. As it is, all the article shows is that the watercooling used is inadequate for the task it was given.
 
It's really sad that you chose to use the Big Water kit to push the cooling on the GPU instead of incorporating the CPU loop with the GPU using the far superior 655 pump and just adding an additional radiator instead. Your temps of 56+ C are way to high for a watercooled component...you shouldn't see more than 40C at load, especially with that waterblock. You are crippling the temps and the basis of your entire article by using sub-par components in your tests. Anyone who watercools knows that today's GPUs need at minimum a 220 or similar surface area radiator to expend the heat being produced...same goes for your i7 CPU...but it looks like you have at least a 320 on it. You should have run a series loop and just added an additional 120 or 220 radiator/fans and been done with it. You'd have had much happier temp results.
 
Would make alot more sense to put in a decent watercooling setup... this test doesnt give anyone ANY idea how a watercooling kit can perform...

Currently running two q9550 and a 4870+ a 4870x2 on my loop.. never gets anything near ur single rad setup on a single card and cpu. Have never seen the temp going past 30c at home.
 
Good card and cooler. Bad article.

You guys need to invest in a decent radiator and pump if you want to test liquid cooled components. A D5 and a MCR 220 isnt that expensive.

At least Zotac used a good cooler. Much better than the garbage EVGA uses on their cards. Al+Cu=lose.
 
A bit off topic:

The first picture shows a case fan stating to get dusty.

The fan flaps already are white-brown.

On my city, fans become very dusty really fast. They end occluding radiators, and air vents. I even cutted out all the metal grid on the case, to reduce dust retention. but still it is catched on the metal borders.
I wish there where something to do about it. maybe some liquid or painting, or some trick to repel dust, or make it less adhesive.

(my father have a German shepper dog, and the last time I opened his case, it was completely full of dog hair.... fun)

If somebody read this, and know a fixing (not involving dogs), please, post.
 
I already occluded the unused memory slots with paper, because the output of the CPU radiator fills them with dust.

Other thing I hate, is when I clean the fan cutting edge. It ends all scratched and dented. I don't know why. The rest of the flaps are not eroded, so why the flaps get dented?

I suspect that they get dented at colliding with some heavier particles, and then start catching the dust, so maybe the solution involves metallic flaps.
 
"Our biggest reservation in outright recommending it over the competing model out there with an identical cooler is that the competition provides its card with a single-slot bracket."

whoelse overclocks and adds watercooling with single-slot card?
 
ya this article is messed up. He starts the article by saying watercooling solutions are more importantly necessary with multiple video cards, yet never tests this setup.

Also I've never done water cooling before, but i would take these other comments word over the articles, that water cooling can keep temperatures a lot cooler.

A question. Does the strength of the pump havea significant effect on the cooling of the product? I would assume their is a large diminishing return after a certain amount of water pressure... hmmm thinking about it maybe not.

What were you thinking Thomas Soderstrom?
 
Water cooling my GPU’s drop my idle temps from 70*C to 45*C and Under load from 90*C to 60*C.
I’m not understanding how 3 OC 285’s can be out preformed by 3 stock 8800 GTX’s. Am I missing something here? Below is my system and the Bench marks I’ve run on it.

Thermaltake Tower Case Armor+
Thermaltake 1000W PSU
ASUS Striker II Extreme
Intel C2D Q9450 OC 3.2GHz
Corsair 4x2GB 1600 DDR3 Set to 1333 FBS 9,9,9,24 t2
3 EVGA 8800GTX 768MB Two SLI one PhysX
1 Seagate 250GB 32MB Cache SATA Boot Drive Vista 64 Bit
5 Seagate 250GB 32MB Cache SATA Drives Raid 5 1TB
1 Termaltake external E-SATA enclosure with Seagate 250GB 32MB Cache for Ubuntu
1 Seagate FreeAgent Extreme 1TB E-SATA to back up the Raid set.
LITE-ON SATA DVD-CD Burner
Gyration Ultra Cordless RF Mouse and Keyboard
3 Koolance 282GXT water blocks
Koolance 330 CPU cooler
Koolance External EHX-1020SL 3 fan radiator
Koolance Internal RP-1000 reservoir and pump
24” Acer Monitor
Turtle Beach Ear Force 5.1 Headphones
Momo Racing Force Feedback Wheel and Racing Pedals
Ideazon Fang Gamepad
Logitech Dual Action Gamepad
Patent Pending Computer Gaming Table

I’ll start with the FutureMark Bench marks all in default settings, and very depending on the graphics driver your using at the time.

3DMark03 71647
3DMark05 19292
3DMark06 16322
3DVantage 20520

All game benches are in 1920x1200 max setting except for Crysis which I will start with. Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Lost Coast, Lost Planet, UT 2004, UT3, Farcry, Farcry 2, are 64 bit; I don’t know if which other games come in a 64 bit version. I tried to use bench mark software written for the game I ran bench marks for and for others I used Fraps to estimate an average.
Crysis Very High 8xAA GPU 27.01
4xAA 29.72
2xAA 33.14
0xAA 38.49
Crysis Very High 0xAA CPU 38.02
Crysis Very High 0xAA 34.98 Harbor
Crysis Warhead 0xAA 45.00 Enthusiasts

Lost Coast 134.04
HL2 150.0
Lost Planet Snow 86.7 Cave 86.2
UT3 238.0
Prey 115
Call to Juarez 31.3
Fear 174
Fear XP 155
Fear PM 179
SS2 166.3
ETQW Capt at 60
Quake 4 Capt at 60
Doom 3 Capt at 60
Fallout 3 Capt at 60
Dead Space Capt at 30
The next games I could only estimate using fraps.
Bioshock 130
Time Shift 130
Fear 2 130
Jericho 40
Portal 200
MassEffect 60
Call of Duty 2 250
Call of Duty 4 150

The only game I play with AA off is Crysis and I really don’t notice any deferent’s when I’m playing it. I think it will take another huge leap ahead from Nvidia, as with the 8800 GTX, to over come AA and higher resolutions playability with Crysis. I think this machine is good for another five years or more.
 
[citation][nom]MikePHD[/nom]Wow! Was this supposed to fool us into thinking they knew anything about watercooling... this arcticle is a joke. Why does the water cooled card not get overclocked, while on the same token, the "air" card gets overclocked the hell out of. This is obviously not the limit of water cooling, it's either the product of a very lame product, or the testers ignorance of water setups.[/citation]

Article clearly states that both cards were overclocked to their respective limits. So what does that say about your comments?
 
[citation][nom]icepick314[/nom]"Our biggest reservation in outright recommending it over the competing model out there with an identical cooler is that the competition provides its card with a single-slot bracket."whoelse overclocks and adds watercooling with single-slot card?[/citation]

The Zotac GTX 285 Infinity IS a single-slot card. It happens to be a single-slot card with a double-slot bracket.

Zotac sells a single-slot water cooled GTX-285 with a double slot bracket, so if you use 3 of them you loose six expansion slots. BFG sells the same card and cooler combo with a single-slot bracket, so if you use three of them you still have 3 or 4 expansion slots left.

If both cards are otherwise equal, BFG wins giving you space to put your OTHER cards.

But it looks like both cards may not be otherwise equal, because Zotac gets some awesome memory overclocks from its card.
 
[citation][nom]rubix_1011[/nom]It's really sad that you chose to use the Big Water kit to push the cooling on the GPU instead of incorporating the CPU loop with the GPU using the far superior 655 pump and just adding an additional radiator instead. Your temps of 56+ C are way to high for a watercooled component...you shouldn't see more than 40C at load, especially with that waterblock. You are crippling the temps and the basis of your entire article by using sub-par components in your tests. Anyone who watercools knows that today's GPUs need at minimum a 220 or similar surface area radiator to expend the heat being produced...same goes for your i7 CPU...but it looks like you have at least a 320 on it. You should have run a series loop and just added an additional 120 or 220 radiator/fans and been done with it. You'd have had much happier temp results.[/citation]

Unlike BFG, Zotac does not include 1/2" barbs with its card. The 3/8" barbs would have put a restriction on the liquid cooling system used for the CPU and left-over Swiftech 1/2" barbs had a different thread, so a separate liquid cooler was used.

Concerning the GPU clocks being stuck, a card that operates perfectly at its shipped speed (722 MHz GPU, 1584 Shader) but cannot operate stably at the next step up, that normally indicates a "stuck" card regardless of whether or not the GPU temp reached into the 70's. That is to say, you'd think the card would go at least 732 MHz if it wasn't stuck, but it didn't. Having a card's factory overclock and a separate liquid cooler's limits be an exact match would be a coincidence too rare to consider.
 
I understand your defense, but to counter your reply, anyone building a water cooled system would simply have just purchased/used the correct sized barbs with threads for use. A quick purchase at most online stores should get you the components you need...and also allow you to criticize the vendor for omitting barbs for a large majority of watercoolers out there. The 3/8 barbs might have caused some flow restriction, but I bet far less of a performance hit than using a substantially weaker pump and radiator combo to power the cooling system for the GPU.
 
The temperatures on the "reviewed" card are a joke. Why bother writing this article when you did't show us the advantages of water cooling over the reference air cooler (not even a mention of the noise levels!!), and you did't test it in SLI, which -ironically- you made all the readers think about it when reading the 1st page!!
You also missed mentioning the fan speed of the OCed air cooled card, was it left to the auto settings? or crancked up? If so, what noise the infamous reference cooler produced?
I can't deny it. This substandard article feels out of place when compared to other TH articles.
 
[citation][nom]rubix_1011[/nom]I understand your defense, but to counter your reply, anyone building a water cooled system would simply have just purchased/used the correct sized barbs with threads for use. A quick purchase at most online stores should get you the components you need...and also allow you to criticize the vendor for omitting barbs for a large majority of watercoolers out there. The 3/8 barbs might have caused some flow restriction, but I bet far less of a performance hit than using a substantially weaker pump and radiator combo to power the cooling system for the GPU.[/citation]

It came to my attention after the testing was completed that the Gigabyte pump is designed to provide adequate flow at low pressure by using low-restriction components, and that the smaller barbs and highly restrictive GPU water block ingress/egress holes are at odds with a high-volume low-pressure pump. A graphics water block, with its 90-degree slots for fluid exchange, is a large restriction that requires significant pressure to work properly.

Perhaps a new comparison including a higher-pressure pump and the BFG liquid-cooled card, with its proper fittings and single-slot bracket, would suffice?
 
Does Global Warming even register with you guys! What a waste of resources. I could power my Prius for a month with what power your consuming here!!!
 
[citation][nom]baddad[/nom]Water cooling my GPU’s drop my idle temps from 70*C to 45*C and Under load from 90*C to 60*C.I’m not understanding how 3 OC 285’s can be out preformed by 3 stock 8800 GTX’s. Am I missing something here? Below is my system and the Bench marks I’ve run on it.[/citation]

The card used for PhysX dramatically improves Vantage score, try it in Tri-SLI with no PhysX and you'll tank.
 
Liquid-Cooled Overclock
722/1,584/2,711 GPU/Shader/DRAM (data rate)

what is the point if it doenst overclok more that the air cooled?
or is this a mistake?
 
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