Canadian Darling, CoolIT Systems has been kicking ass and taking names in the high end CPU cooler market with their excellent MTEC systems which combine watercooling and peltiers (TEC’s) into quiet and dependable cooling systems with high overclock potential. You would think that with big OEM wins with Shuttle and DELL under their belt, the Calgary, Alberta company would be happy just making CPU cooling solutions. Not a chance. After CPUs, their next stop is the VGA cooling market and today we get a chance to check out one of their Dual Drive Bay VGA Coolers for nVIDIA 8800 series GPU’s.
The NV Reference Series dual drive bay cooler was first seen at COMPUTEX 2007 in Taipei. At the time, CoolIT was working closely with both nVIDIA and ATI to develop a custom cooling solution that mated their MTEC cooling system with both company’s latest GPUs. As a result of this collaboration, they were able to create cooling systems for both that promise maximum cooling with high reliability and ease of installation. Our focus today is to see just how well our NV Reference Series coolers perform, but most importantly, how easy they are to setup and get going. But at about $325 US for this system, is it worth the price of admission?
Features and Specifications
The Dual Drive Bay NV Reference Cooling System features the following specifications…
Radiator
High performance, custom designed radiator
Dimension: 143 x 83 x 55 mm
Fan
Power usage: Max 1.5 Watts
Airflow: 63.5 CFM
Noise: Max 34dBA
Bearing Type: Ball
Life Cycle: 100,000 hrs
Type: Dual offset internal
Overall Dimensions: 217 x 146 x 86 mm
Pump
Power usage: Max 8 Watts
Design: 12VDC coreless outrunner
pump w/ integrated
expansion vessel
Noise: <15dBA
Life Cycle: 50,000 hrs
Dimension: 50 x 50 x 75 mme
Flow: 3.5 L/min
Weight: 205g
The Dual Drive Bay Cooler systems come totally pre-plumbed for a crossfire or SLI systems. Just plug it in and go. However, the mad scientists at CoolIT will also do triple SLI or CrossfireX versions if you want to give them some extra green.
Once installed, CoolIT claims that this system will improve GPU Performance, reduce noise, all while being very simple to install and be totally maintenance free. As a result of the extra cooling, the Dual Drive Bay VGA Cooler should also improve the reliability of your GPU’s by maintaining consistent temperatures throughout the operating range.
What’s In The Box?
Our system came to us with all the necessary hardware to totally replace the stock coolers on our pair of Vanilla eVGA 8800 ULTRA Video Cards which run at totally stock speeds. There were a large number of very small screws and springs in the packages so I’d totally recommend installing them on a clean light coloured surface so you don’t accidentally lose something. A manual with good illustrations comes as part of the package and will guide you through the installation step by step. There are no drivers to install so no CD or software comes part of this package.
First Impressions
The CoolIT Systems Dual Drive Bay NV Reference VGA Cooler is basically two main parts: The Dual Drive Bay unit which includes the radiator, fan and pump and the MTEC cooling assemblies that affix to the video cards.
The Dual Drive Bay Unit is definitely true to its namesake. It takes up two of your 5.25 inch drive bays and contains the radiator assembly that can be seen from the front of the case when assembled. This assembly draws cool air through the front of the radiator and exhausts itself into the case. Because this will dump the hot air right onto some CPU coolers, I was a little worried that depending on how hot the air is, this may adversely affect CPU temperatures, but we’ll see.
There are two MTEC GPU cooling units because the system is pre-plumbed for an SLI or Crossfire system. If you only have one single GPU, this system isn’t for you. The plates are specifically machined for 8800 series GPUs, but based on the somewhat modular nature of the units, it is possible that CoolIT may release new hardware to allow you to adapt them to future nVIDIA GPUs should you grow out of your 8800 series units.
The GPU cooling units are attached to the Dual Drive Bay assembly with Neoprene hoses. The whole system is hand assembled at the CoolIT factory in Calgary and are totally ready to go out of the box for a seemingly easy installation by the end user.
Pre-Installation Preparation
While most people will start ripping stuff apart, I prefer to do a good preparation of my hardware before installing any cooling mechanism. This includes making sure that the hardware is free of dust and debris and that all mating surfaces are cleaned up before applying the heatsink compounds or cooling pads. I hadn’t looked at my 8800 ULTRAs in quite some time and forgot how big they were, even though they were sitting in the cavernous interior of a CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 chassis.
The installation requires full disassembly of the whole existing cooling system that is attached to the GPUs. You’re basically stripping them stark naked down to the RAM and GPU. Video Card manufacturers seem to toss the thermal goop onto the GPU like ice cream so you’ll need to thoroughly clean them off with a soft cloth and contact cleaner. The memory modules are comparatively easier to clean off and prep. You will not be reusing any of the existing thermal goop as the cooling assemblies are all pre-assembled with new thermal tape and thermal goop so make sure you do a good job cleaning. I felt that this was a part of the manual that was not highlighted well enough and should be to ensure optimum performance.
Installing the New Coolers
Although the manual says to install the Dual Drive Bay unit and route the coolers inside the chassis before installation, I felt that it was easier to assemble everything outside of the case for a number of reasons. For starters, there are a large number of small parts floating around that I would not want to lose inside my case. Also, by assembling them outside the case, I would be able to place them on a smooth surface to enable me to check if the assemblies are installed properly and are not warping the PCB when battening down the hatches.
After removing all the existing thermal tape and goop and pre-assembling the cooling assemblies loosely (there are two parts), I placed the first cooling assembly up onto my work surface and then plopped the video card on top of it. This allowed me to easily locate and line up the holes to throw the screws into. It is important to give all the screws even turns to ensure that you don’t end up warping the PCB.
If you’ve done everything right, it should look something like the above picture. All that is left is to plug in the power connector to the PCB. Although it looks like everything is good to go, there was actually a problem with the fit and finish.
As mentioned, I started with both pieces of the cooling plate loosely buckled together. This proved to be a good move as I noticed that when I fastened them together tighter, they would bow the PCB. I was able to nudge things together and get them close, but I still was not able to 100% tighten them to eachother. Because it seems that I have one of the early units, I would imagine that CoolIT will be improving the fitment on shipping units so that you can avoid the scary PCB bowing that I experienced.
After all is said and done, you’ll have a spiffy pair of 8800 ULTRA redecorated with CoolIT Systems latest GPU coolers. They do indeed look sharp and ready for business. If it wasn’t for the PCB bowing issue with the coolers, it would be one of those totally uneventful installations. I did notice that CoolIT made liberal use of what looked like standard silicon paste and if I had to do it all over again, I’d be throwing on some Arctic Cooling MX2 or some of the new GELID Solutions GC1 to improve cooling performance. Both compounds are not electrically conductive making them ideal for this sort of installation.
Let’s see if we can have a more uneventful installation with the Dual Drive Bay Assembly.
Installing the Dual Drive Bay
Upon first glance, it would seem that the assembly of this unit would be the easiest of the bunch. Just slide it in and go right? Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case as I will explain…
I found that installation was easiest with as many blocking plates removed as possible. This allows you to have as much space as possible to drop in your two video cards first. As I moved to pushing in the Dual Drive Bay assembly, I was surprised by how hard it was to get the unit to move in more than a couple centimeters.
Upon further inspection, it looked like the Dual Drive Bay did not match up with the inside of my Cosmos 1000 case. In order to get it to go in, I had to fiddle with a flat head screwdriver to keep the panels of the Dual Drive Bay from expanding and keeping the bay from going in further.
When I finally got the drive bay to slide in smoothly, I was then blocked by another issue. Tabs on the Cosmos 1000 drive bays kept the Dual Drive Bay from sliding in all the way. They actually butted up against the front of the radiator. After closer inspection, it would seem that I would need to actually modify the tabs by cutting them short enough to allow the radiator to move back flush, but that would be a project for another day.
The final step in the installation is to get power going to the Dual Drive Bay by attaching a standard four pin MOLEX power connector to the back of the unit and you’re good to go. At least from a functionality perspective. I’m hoping that both the GPU plate and Dual Drive Bay fitment issues are all a result of getting possibly an early review sample. I remember back when CoolIT launched with their original products that similar issues surfaced, but they ironed them out pretty quick. Hopefully this is the case with this product as well.
The Dual Drive Bay is also compatible with CoolIT’s MTEC Control Center which provides full system monitoring and management. You can see these connections seated beside the power connector.
System Setup
In order to see the effect of our new high performance GPU cooling solution, we installed them into a system with the following specifications:
- AMD AM2 X2 4200+ CPU (Provided by Geeks.com)
- Thermaltake V1 CPU Cooler – (As Reviewed)
- DFI Lanparty NF590 SLI-M2R/G Motherboard (Provided by DFI)
- EVGA nVidia 8800 ULTRA Video Cards in SLI
- Seagate 250 GB SATAII 16MB 7200 RPM Hard Drive (Provided by Geeks.com)
- Western Digital 36 GB 10K SATA Hard Drive
- Creative Labs X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card
- LG DVD Writer – (Provided by Geeks.com)
- Cooler Master Real Power Pro 1250 Watt Power Supply – (Provided by Cooler Master)
All these parts were assembled into a CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 Chassis. Our operating system of choice was Windows Vista Premium and we used nVidia’s own NVMonitor to check out the temperatures before and after the installation of the cooling system. A sound level meter was used to measure sound levels before and after the surgery. Our torture test of choice was 3DMark06 running the demo nonstop until we passed out from heat stroke. Let’s check out the results.
Power Consumption
One of the things that I was curious about was how much extra juice these puppies would suck up. Since I’m running a 1250W power supply, I should be good, but what about those that aren’t? I wanted to find out what kind of power supply would be the bare minimum to power a system like this so I hooked up my Watt Meter to the system and took some readings. I grabbed numbers with and without the NV Reference coolers both at idle and at load.
Here are my findings:
With most power supplies being about 80% efficient these days, we’re looking at a power supply with a minimum power rating of at least 850 Watts just to be safe. If you’re running anything less than an 850 Watt power supply with similar components, you’ll need an upgrade.
Noise Levels
CoolIT claims that one of the features of this system is a reduction in noise levels. Since the cooling plates have no fans attached, I would say that for the most part, that is a no brainer. Let’s see how things pan out in practice.
We took a noise level meter and pointed it at the front of the case about a foot away. We took noise level readings at both load and idle, both before and after the installation of the system. Here’s what we found out:
As you can see, the noise levels actually increased under load. This is due in part to the fact that the fan built into the drive bay makes quite the racket, doing these seemingly random runs at high speed. Though technically the video cards no longer make any noise, the Dual Drive Bay more than makes up for that and produce the majority of the overall increase in noise level.
Thermal Performance
If this system didn’t do anything but make noise and cause a brown out, we’d have a problem. Here’s what we found out about the system both before and after the surgery…
So does the CoolIT System’s NV Reference GPU Cooling system put down the numbers to make it a performance winner? Clearly so! With double digit temperature drops of up to 35C at idle and up to 27C at full load, if you game with headphones on and don’t care if your system is GreenIT or not, then this is the GPU cooling system for you. Basically, you’ve brought a Hot Rod over a hybrid.
Let’s take this review home with a conclusion!
Final Thoughts
I’ll have to start out as the heavy here. I was actually expecting more from CoolIT System’s Dual Drive Bay VGA Cooler for nVidia 8800 series GPUs. After looking at what the features were touting, I was really looking forward to a reduction in noise. It’s actually really nice sometimes to have a high performance system that you don’t have to shout over. Instead I get new and different, louder, yet more annoying noises. It’s like I was shopping for a Civic and ended up with a top fuel funny car. I should have known better than to expect quiet from a company that clearly builds performance products.
Getting back on the lighter side, this system is clearly here to peform. With massive double digit decreases in temperatures for our super hot eVGA 8800 ULTRAS, this was clearly the highlight of the review. In fact, as a result of these temperature decreases, I was actually able to overclock my pair of ULTRAs up to the same speed as their highest end off the shelf overclocked brothers. I took the stock 612MHz GPU/2160 Mhz Memory to a 675MHz GPU/2250 Mhz Memory and ran that all day long without any weird artifacts and just a degree difference between the official numbers I logged.
Although I couldn’t get higher than 695 MHz GPU/2290 MHz Memory on my two cards, it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to go higher. The Cosmos 1000 isn’t the coolest case in the world and not all ULTRAs are created equally. Some may overclock better than others.
Another thing that was touted as a great selling point of this product was its ease of installation. It definitely wasn’t a walk in the park and the experience that I had having to bend things and cut things to make everything fit would probably frustrate the hell out of a less experienced user. I would like to give CoolIT Systems the benefit of the doubt that my sample was one of the first ones out there and that they will work through these fitment issues. I for one didn’t mind taking some tin snips to my case and making that Dual Drive Bay fit though I would have liked to have seen the coolers themselves fit the cards properly out of the box without bending the crap out of the PCB.
Speaking of the drive bay, there was an interesting thing I discovered about where the exhausted hot air gets dumped. In our Cosmos 1000 enclosure, the Dual Drive Bay is mounted directly below the optical drive, and is directly in front of the CPU area. All of the hot air from the pump and radiator, you guessed it, gets shoveled into this area, which lead the CPU to increase in temperature by anywhere from five to ten degrees. Although I’m certain that CoolIT is pleased that this makes a great case to upgrade to one of their excellent CPU cooling systems, I’m sure this would be a bit of a surprise for anyone that wasn’t expecting that.
At the end of the day, the CoolIT Systems Dual Drive Bay Reference NV VGA Cooler deserves a pat on the back for performance. However, I find myself hard pressed to recommend it to anyone but experienced users who don’t mind a little modding and who don’t care if their system sounds like an aircraft. However, I do love performance and I’ve got watts to burn and a good set of headphones, but CoolIT really wasn’t too straight up with what this bad boy is really like.
Pros
- A Very High Peformance Cooling System for your 8800 series GPU
Cons
- This system is nowhere near quiet
- Very quirky to install and required some modding of our case
- Sucks up quite a bit of power. 850 Watt PSU minimum.
Overall Rating: 8.0 / 10.0
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