Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Liquid Cooling System GH-WIU01
Bluetooth 8 Aug 2005

Pricing of 7800GTX >>>

Test Results

In the simple test, we used Super PI 32M to test heat up the CPU. In the aircooled environment, we used the normal Gigabyte 3DRocket Cooler. Board used is a Jetway NF4 SLI running Corsair DDR400 at CAS 2, 5-2-2 1T cmd. CPU temp is set to default (1.5v) and vdimm is 2.8v.

As we can see from the diagram below, the CPU temp was recorded at 33 degrees when idle and 46 degrees after the burning in. The fan speed was not recorded here but it is at 2500rpm.

Aircooled

Liquid Cooled

As for Liquid cooled, the idle temp starts from 30 degrees and rises to 45 degrees over time. The CPU fan speed is 1597rpm and the radiator fan speed is at 2209rpm.

It is not difficult to see that liquid cooling does help to keep the heat levels down to below 50 degrees. We went ahead and test for push the CPU further.

As you probably know, FX-53 aren't that overclockable. In fact, during air cool, I can't get it very stable even at 2.6 GHz (FX-53 = 2.4GHz). With the Liquid cooling installed, I pushed it beyond 2.6GHz and I am stable at 220 x 12 = 2.64GHz with ram running at CAS 2.5, 8-4-4, 1T, CPU Vcore at 1.55v.

Conclusion

Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Liquid Cooling System GH-WIU01 is the first liquid cooling product from Gigabyte. Being its first, there are bound to be some hiccups here and there. This is especially true to anyone who is new to liquid cooling.

The kit comes with a simple, small and powerful reservoir/pump which does not generate lots of heat and noise. If you wish, you can even fit that within the Gigabyte Aurora casing. One thing to note that the circuitry of the pump and right below the reservoir. Any damage or leakage in the reservoir will be a disaster. In fact, I told Gigabyte to alter the design a bit so that the PCB resides on the top corner of the reservoir instead of placing it underneath the reservoir.

The radiator comes with variable speed. We found out that setting it to 650 ~ 1500rpm gives me minimum noise. The fan on the water block can be attached to help cool the surrounding mosfets.

Installation was not as straightforward as it seems. The kit comes with pretty poor documentation on the installation procedure. In fact, I was trying to figure out what are those parts described in the manual. Diagrams are too small and worst of all it is all in black & white. There is definitely room for improvement over the documentation. How about supplying a CDROM with colourful pictures and a video of the installation procedure.

Overall, it is a good experience and I definitely would use it on my P4 system to cut down the noise level.

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