Water-blocks Danger Den and AquaStone for processors and video cards
Date: 04.10.2005
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Measuring the hydraulic resistance of water-blocks
For the procedure of measuring the hydraulic resistance, read one of the previous test reviews. We just remind that as the pumps we used powerful Hydor L30 devices, and regular Hydor L20. On the pumps, we removed the suction union. As the injector, we used the bundled union of 9 mm inner diameter for AquaStone, and 13mm for Danger Den TDX.
 Hydraulic resistance diagram with Hydor L20 pump Hydraulic resistance diagram with Hydor L30 pump
The blue-green bars stand for the flow losses because of the hydraulic resistance, other colors stand for the produced flow through the water-block. The quantity if unions on AquaStone water-block is marked as x2 and x3. TDX showed all the advantages of "large-caliber" unions. That is a good margin, which may serve best when using another plate. AquaStone indeed surprised in the case of two-union model. The flow was expected to be less than produced. Perhaps the gap between the cover and the pyramids had a favorable effect, and the use of pyramids instead of pins, with other things being equal, in most ways tends to produce smaller hydraulic resistance. The three-union model took a noticeable lead over the two-union and minimized the major shortcoming.
Test Results
The procedure of tests and conditions for all water-blocks are identical. For details, read one of the previous reviews of water-blocks.
We ran the tests with the following configuration:
- Motherboard - Epox 9NPAJ nForce 4, at HTTõ3;
- Processor - Athlon 64 3000+ (core - Venice, 1,4 Â, S939);
- Video card - Asus 6600 128MB (core - 540, memory- 680);
- Memory - Samsung, 2 x 512 MB PC3200;
- PSU - Hiper HPU-4R480 480 W;
- Pumps - Hydor L20 II, and L30 II.
In the BIOS of the motherboard we set the maximum possible voltage, in this case it is +0.35 V. The processor was overclocked to 2700 MHz.
 Results diagram The blue color stands for the data on Hydor L20 pump, red - for Hydor L30. The test results proved somehow a surprise. It turned out that all the three participants of today's review took first places, and while it was expectable of our North American guest from the very start, then AquaStone with two unions proved a pleasant surprise (especially with Hydor L20). Such success was due to the fact that water uniformly washes the whole surface of the water-block, which does give a minor performance boost sufficient to become one of the three leaders. Nevertheless, this model offers higher hydraulic resistance and the results will definitely be worse in a real system. That can be traced from the difference in results produced for various pumps - it is greater than the average versus the rivals. The three-union model is free from this shortcoming, which makes it attractive but causes other problems typical of such a design. First of all, it imposes some restrictions upon the components used (application of dividers, serial connections, expansion vessels with two inputs and one output etc.).
In should be kept in mind that Danger Den TDX was tested with plate ¹1 and offers small margin for improving its efficiency (and decrease of the hydraulic resistance). Danger Den TDX is an excellent water-block of superb efficiency and exterior - that's about all what can be said about it, so we'd better move on to reviewing water-blocks for video cards.
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