NZXT Kraken G10 + GTX 780 Lightning Mini-Review

[chimaxi83]

Wow, what a great overclock. Awesome results!

 

[Gloomy]

Any way to fit a VRM heatsink under it?

 

[Fastx]

Nice work F2F, it was another good read and nice setup. I have a quick question, I don't know 780's that good and I curious what memory overclock with each Samsung & Hynix memory is considered very good on air and is pretty common, also what is the highest memory overclock have you seen on Samsung and Hynix memory on air?

Btw are you going to be doing a review on your Qnix monitor and overclocking it?
(I hope you are and pm me when/if you do so I don't miss it, TIA)

 

[fleshconsumed]

I know that cooling the VRMs is tricky,but the fan on the G10 is supposed to do exactly that.I'm just disappointed that there is extra work required for it to actually work.

From what I understand the fan that's included with the kraken is a 80mm 1500rpm fan. That's too small and too slow, it is simply not going to move enough air to adequately cool the vrms. I really think you need at least 2000rpm fan. Bad choice of fan on kraken part.

 

[Silverforce11]

Btw, thermaltake fans that come with their coolers is rubbish, its so noisy for the CFM.. if you want a quiet system, put in some Corsair SP 120mm fans, very good static pressure and CFM for radiator work and nearly half as noisy (perceived) as the thermaltakes.

AIO modded GPU with some good fans = silent cool ops, all the benefits of water cooling at a fraction of the price.

 

[Tristor]

On a reference GTX 780 you are left with a vrm cooling dilemma. I haven't seen any vrm/memory plates for sale. And not sure if you can you measure you vrm temps using software on your card? I don't think the vrm temperatures I posted were very high at all considering the voltages being used. I don't use Furmark for testing because it's not a realistic load. I wonder if EVGA would sell the plate they use on the ACX cards?? Might be another decent option.

I'm making the plate myself (or rather I'm having a machinist cut the copper plate for me via CNC). I'm going to use an EVGA backplate, have the copper front plate CNC machined to match the depth requirements to make good contact with the VRAM, VRMs, and GPU and have fins cut in on the top over the VRMs in such a way that I can do a high-pressure mount using bolts and attach the waterblock from the H80i centered over the GPU area using the X-shaped bolt holes on the card. This way I don't need a manufacturer provided faceplate, and I'm able to effectively use the watercooler to cool all aspects, although at the cost of losing some GPU cooling performance.

After I get the plate and mounting bracket fabricated for me I plan to do a test run comparing mounting the waterblock directly to the GPU with ramsinks/vrmsinks + 92mm fan vs the custom faceplate. I'm assuming the custom faceplate will provide better cooling, but if it doesn't, it's probably cheaper and easier to use individual sinks + fan, especially if you make use of the Kraken G10 and mount the fan on the outside of the bracket rather than the inside to give clearance for a fairly decent sized heatsink on the VRMs.

If I find the fan is more effective, I may end up picking up a G10 to test as well. In my case I'm doing this is as a testbed for prototyping a simple way to get effective cooler at a lower cost across a large quantity of cards in a friend's mining rig. I think that using the methodology I've proposed will probably be more effective at cost since the copper plate can cover 4 cards for $30 vs $30 for the G10 which doesn't cool the VRMs effectively without further modifications/cost.

 

[Face2Face]

Nice work F2F, it was another good read and nice setup. I have a quick question, I don't know 780's that good and I curious what memory overclock with each Samsung & Hynix memory is considered very good on air and is pretty common, also what is the highest memory overclock have you seen on Samsung and Hynix memory on air?

Btw are you going to be doing a review on your Qnix monitor and overclocking it?
(I hope you are and pm me when/if you do so I don't miss it, TIA)

Thanks Fast, if I had to make an estimate I would say 1700-1800Mhz is common on Hynix memory. Samsung would be 1750-1850Mhz. I have seen bot Hynix and Samsung hit in the high 1900's, so some are better than others.

Not going to do any review on the Qnix, there seems to be plenty of them out there.

From what I understand the fan that's included with the kraken is a 80mm 1500rpm fan. That's too small and too slow, it is simply not going to move enough air to adequately cool the vrms. I really think you need at least 2000rpm fan. Bad choice of fan on kraken part.

It's actually a 92mm fan. Not sure how fast it spins and what CFM it moves, but it does a fine job at cooling my card's vrm. I know there are better fans out there, but I don't feel the need to get one as of yet.

Yeah I used shims. That's with both cards running full tilt. The hottest card only sees a 10C or so difference. Individually though, I would normally see 80-85C on one card mining, now I see about 60-65. That's also running 1150/1600 OC.

Ok, wanted to make sure Those temps drops look much better in an individual card setup with a nice overclock to boot.

The lightning have excessive VRMs so they dont even run hot, unlike reference R290/X (and most custom) as well as a lot of the 780/ti models. It really is the best card for AIO cooling since the only flaw with this method is keeping VRM temps under control.

Very true. It's hard to compare a card with 16 GPU phases to one with 5 GPU phases. It's much easier to cool the mosfets when the voltage is spread over 16 phases at full load. Also having this many phases helps keep voltage ripple down too. If I still had my reference GTX 780 I'm not sure I would have gone the G10 route. Plus, I wouldn't have any way to monitor the vrm temps..

Any way to fit a VRM heatsink under it?

There is plenty of space for most vrm heatsinks. Not sure of the actual measurement, but at least an inch.

Wow, what a great overclock. Awesome results!

Thanks Chi!

Btw, thermaltake fans that come with their coolers is rubbish, its so noisy for the CFM.. if you want a quiet system, put in some Corsair SP 120mm fans, very good static pressure and CFM for radiator work and nearly half as noisy (perceived) as the thermaltakes.

AIO modded GPU with some good fans = silent cool ops, all the benefits of water cooling at a fraction of the price.

My case is filled with Corsair SP fans. The theramltake fans on the quiet setting are no louder than the Corsair SP's. Of course when you ramp them up to the Extreme setting they are pretty loud. I plan on getting some different fan's in the future.

 

[Face2Face]

I'm making the plate myself (or rather I'm having a machinist cut the copper plate for me via CNC). I'm going to use an EVGA backplate, have the copper front plate CNC machined to match the depth requirements to make good contact with the VRAM, VRMs, and GPU and have fins cut in on the top over the VRMs in such a way that I can do a high-pressure mount using bolts and attach the waterblock from the H80i centered over the GPU area using the X-shaped bolt holes on the card. This way I don't need a manufacturer provided faceplate, and I'm able to effectively use the watercooler to cool all aspects, although at the cost of losing some GPU cooling performance.

After I get the plate and mounting bracket fabricated for me I plan to do a test run comparing mounting the waterblock directly to the GPU with ramsinks/vrmsinks + 92mm fan vs the custom faceplate. I'm assuming the custom faceplate will provide better cooling, but if it doesn't, it's probably cheaper and easier to use individual sinks + fan, especially if you make use of the Kraken G10 and mount the fan on the outside of the bracket rather than the inside to give clearance for a fairly decent sized heatsink on the VRMs.

If I find the fan is more effective, I may end up picking up a G10 to test as well. In my case I'm doing this is as a testbed for prototyping a simple way to get effective cooler at a lower cost across a large quantity of cards in a friend's mining rig. I think that using the methodology I've proposed will probably be more effective at cost since the copper plate can cover 4 cards for $30 vs $30 for the G10 which doesn't cool the VRMs effectively without further modifications/cost.

Sounds awesome :thumbsup: I look forward to seeing your results.

 

[fleshconsumed]

It's actually a 92mm fan. Not sure how fast it spins and what CFM it moves, but it does a fine job at cooling my card's vrm. I know there are better fans out there, but I don't feel the need to get one as of yet.

You're right, it's 92mm fan. However, it is still only 1500rpm. I was into quiet cooling for a long time now so I have a number of slow 80mm and 92mm fans left over from before 120mm became common and 1500rpm just doesn't move enough air. I would strongly recommend upgrading to 2000-2200rpm fan to anyone using G10 Kraken.

 

[24601]

My fully custom water 4 x 140mm with full cover waterblock + back VRM sink still gets to ~60c on VRM temps for 290 @ 1000 core 1500 ram @ -.0065v on core.

Anyone doing this G10 funny business on 290/290x is a fool.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2363033

 

[tolis626]

My fully custom water 4 x 140mm with full cover waterblock + back VRM sink still gets to ~60c on VRM temps for 290 @ 1000 core 1500 ram @ -.0065v on core.

Anyone doing this G10 funny business on 290/290x is a fool.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2363033

A fool?Why?I mean,it's too much hassle and money to go full water.I would if I could,but I can't so something like the G10 is a nice middle ground solution and certainly is competitive with air coolers.

Other than that,for the VRM temps of the 290/x cards,I will only blame AMD's lackluster reference cards.I'm still waiting for the MSI Lightning to come out,just to see what this GPU is really worth.I mean,I'm okay with them designing a GPU that needs more power,but cheaping out in cooling and power subsystems is downright unacceptable,especially for a company struggling to stay competitive.If you can't be better than your competitors,at least be as good and try to beat them in other areas (e.g. pricing).I don't think at least adding better power circuitry would cost them that much.

That said,although I kinda hate NVidia,if the situation isn't even remedied partially by the Lightning,I will go with NVidia this round and raise a middle finger to AMD for being so stupid.If my budget permits it,of course.Nothing lower than 780/290 for me!

 

[fleshconsumed]

My fully custom water 4 x 140mm with full cover waterblock + back VRM sink still gets to ~60c on VRM temps for 290 @ 1000 core 1500 ram @ -.0065v on core.

Anyone doing this G10 funny business on 290/290x is a fool.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2363033

I was going to type a serious reply, but then I decided against it. All I'm going to say instead is this:

 

[Redmenace]

From what I understand the fan that's included with the kraken is a 80mm 1500rpm fan. That's too small and too slow, it is simply not going to move enough air to adequately cool the vrms. I really think you need at least 2000rpm fan. Bad choice of fan on kraken part.

I was getting high vrm temperatures on a 7950 with a X40. The G10 fan was connected to the lead from the pump per the instructions. I then tried connecting the fan to a mobo header and bumped up the speed in the bios but at still quiet level. Vrm temperatures are now same as my crossfired 7950 with dualx cooler. X40 control does not turn fan fast enough. BTW, the fan is spec'd at 92mm, 1500 rpm.

 

[Silverforce11]

My fully custom water 4 x 140mm with full cover waterblock + back VRM sink still gets to ~60c on VRM temps for 290 @ 1000 core 1500 ram @ -.0065v on core.

Anyone doing this G10 funny business on 290/290x is a fool.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2363033

Are those mining temps on the VRM?

Because 60C is pretty damn high for such a mild clock..

My ghetto mod gets around 60C with Valley loops.