Project Black Betty Revealed!!
EPUK asked me to set it up and provide some feedback on what I found, the upshot for me was I got me a chiller to use and boost me scores
For you guys here is what I found:
To maximise the potential using the chiller with 7800GTX's, you need to use the modded BIOS without a temp monitor - the downside is that you dont know what the GPU core temps are. The upside is that you can monitor the water temps and that will give you an indication that all is well (water temp below 20 degrees or lower = good performance below 4 degrees throttles still, up to 35 degrees water is good for idling).
7800GTX will not overclock any higher than you can currently achieve (on water) unless you get the core volt modded (see shigsy) - It does however run faster at same clock speeds with lower temps (see scores in 3d section title - Black Betty).
Fully overclocked 7800GTX (530mhz core) pumps out around 80w of heat so there is probably enough room to cool the CPU as well (up to FX57) - the unit I had was tuned for 210w at +16 degrees - to perform full SLI system cooling with FX57 under load probably needs to be tuned to do 240w at -5.
Condensation is something that you need to protect against - To do this you need to use plumbing insulation on the pipes and would recommend putting some neoprene around the gpu heads (not essential but just in case). The insulation help with keeping the liquid nice and cool too.
The unit is as quiet as a mach2 (when side panels are on) and 12v 80cfm fans are the cooling weapon of choice).
I was really impresed with the basic model I had to play with better cooling control (I had a basic development unit) to enable you to switch between idle and load cooling.
I used a 33% Anti freeze mix with de-ionised water but a 50/50 mix ensures that should the unit reach -35 degrees, the water is kept in a liquid state.
The unit came with 1/2" pipe as standard but can easily be adapted for 8mm or 10mm ID tubing - this would allow you to use exisiting mach modded cases to pipe the cooler into the case with the chiller sat where the mach traditionaly sits.
An impressive piece of kit to use, easy to install and as good as it gets - looking forward to receiving my volt modded GTX's to push the core up to 600+ Mhz (producing around 110w each under load) to really see what this baby can do.
The Coach rates this kit - 9/10
Thanks for the opportunity to try it out guys - hope the feedback I have been able to supply is useful.
