Crossfiring Graphics Cards With Different Water Blocks

Prof. Cheese · 13 May 2010 at 16:38

Hey guys,

Am very, very close to finally building my watercooling system. Was going to go SLI'd GTX 280s, but have now gone for Crossfire'd 5870s.

Now I was wondering if I'm going to be able to mix and match 2 water blocks. The first is the one that comes pre-installed on a Power Color card:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-129-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1502

The other is a reference Asus fitted with this water block:

http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=938&page=1

PaulyD · 13 May 2010 at 16:50

Really depends if the inlet and outlets match up on each card, if they do your sorted, if not you have a headache on your hands..

Always best to get matching blocks to avoid this, looks nicer too when they match

Prof. Cheese · 13 May 2010 at 16:57

Too late, ordered them both before I realised the potential complications (facepalm time).

PaulyD · 13 May 2010 at 17:35

The LCS uses a reference EK block, if you have issues with the Koolance you could sell it and get a matching EK block? Lose the bling though as the Koolance blocks are pretty

Prof. Cheese · 13 May 2010 at 17:59

I've been looking at the images of the blocks. The connection points are at different places. I've thought of a simple workaround though. I assume moving the secondary card down one slot would leave enough space to use some tubing to bend round a little. I've got some old Tygon I could use for this effect. Downside would be the second card dropping to PCI-E 2.0 x8 speed. But the difference in performance should be marginal I'm guessing.