![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, December 08, 2004
- Author:
- Steve Lynch
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Danger Den TDX Water Cooling Kit
Thinking about water cooling you computer? Water cooling is not as wacky as it sounded five years ago, and today top companies like Danger Den are making performance-minded kits that will make "pro" cooling a breeze.
Our Testing Methodology:
Using the on-die sensor of the Athlon64 3000+ we are able to see temperature changes almost immediately as the load changed on the CPU. We used Prime95 and a UT2K3 16 Player Bot match to load the CPU. The CPU is operating at "100%" according to WinXP task manager, which is exactly what we need for temperature testing. Motherboard Monitor 5 was used to monitor temperatures during testing. Temperature readings are taken from the on-die temperature sensor on the Athlon64 3000+. Prime95 was run simultaneously with a UT2K3 CTF map running in the background with 16 bots going at it to get our temperatures as high as possible for a sustained period of time for testing. With the noted two applications running, we allowed the CPU to stay at 100% load for 30 minutes and then observed the temperatures and kept an eye on them from there. What we're looking for is where they peaked and leveled off. This is the temperature we recorded. These tests are repeated five times for the average temperature. The ambient temperature in the test area was 75°F. We kept the temperature level for the duration of the testing in order to make our test results as accurate as possible. The different ambient temperatures and other test variances will result in having test temperatures unique to this test, making comparison to other previous [H] testing impossible.
Test Results:
All test results are recorded in Fahrenheit. I'm including this link to an awesome Fahrenheit to Celsius Converting Tool for all of our non-USA readers. The newest version of the Google Toolbar will also do temperature conversion by simple typing it into the Google navigation box. By typing "48C in F" without quotes, Google will convert the temperatures for you.
As with all similarly configured water cooling systems, like the ones used for comparison results, you will not see a lot of difference in stock idle numbers simply because the cooling ability far outpaces any heat generated by these systems at idle.
Surely it can be argued that this is a dead heat (pun intended) because the results fall within a few degrees of each other. Having said that, these results are a clear demonstration of the cooling ability of the TDX over the previous generation of Danger Den blocks, the Maze 4.
Again, at idle we see very little to differentiate these blocks from one another. The Antarctica seemed slip a little with the added heat from the overclocked processor but the silver TDX still turned in the lowest numbers of the group.
The overclocked load temperatures widened the gap between the Danger Den products and the Antarctica system. What is most interesting is that there is almost no difference between the Silver TDX and the copper TDX. Overall, all systems easily handled the heat put out by the overclocked Athlon64 3000+.