The 7990 big block showdown

Uncle Petey

Uncle Petey

Uncle Petey

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Joined
22 Jul 2012
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London
[Bruce Buffer voice]
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Saturday night showdown for water cooling fans across the world!

But first, the Friday night pre-fight weigh-in.

Fighting out of the red corner, the Aqua Computer Kryographics 7990!
This super heavyweight bruiser hailing from the Fatherland seeks to dominate all with it's chiseled good looks and sheer size and mass.

Oop04GU.jpg


Fighting out of the blue corner, the EK-FC7990SE!
This refined fighter from the former Yugoslavian republic of Slovenia is regarded as the people's champion and comes with a pedigree second to none.

SsVHgDF.jpg


Early indications from our panel of experts say the smaller fighter has the edge with flow over both cores as well as the VRMs.

Stay tuned for Saturday night's battle of the beasts!
 
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Gotta love dual blocks they look monstrous. Is it right one of these does series and the other parallel within the block?
 
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Ragnahex said:
Gotta love dual blocks they look monstrous. Is it right one of these does series and the other parallel within the block?
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That's a good question.
The EK is obviously serial between cores as you can see, but the Aqua block's two cores aren't quite separated from each other and wouldn't really favour the flow path if they were , so it looks to be the case.

I'll give you a better answer once I get it filled :)
I'm very curious to see how it flows in there.
 
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I think the Aquacomputer block looks nicest but that is a weird set-up between the cores. The EK looks like it has one way flow but that AC looks like it can flow both ways?
 
Yeah, it's got that industrial art kinda look. Might have to take some better pics to show off some of that plexi bevelling.

I put together a test loop with the Aqua block a short while ago (no card attached) and it seemed to have very little flow restriction at least with both cores getting proper coverage.

I guess we'll see how it does tomorrow when I (hopefully) get the last few bits n bobs.
Tempted to put a few drops of dye in there too, but I'm a bit wary of staining tbh...

ED: Another thing to note is that it doesn't use thermal pads on anything except the VRM's, unlike the EK which uses pads on everything except the cores. I hope ze Germans got their tolerances bang on...
 
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I'm afraid fight night's been postponed.

Had an all day epic session putting my own rig back together and just can't be arsed to do the 7990's tbh.
I will have to tear my pc down again, so I might test the 7990's at some point before they go to their permanent home.
 
Uncle Petey said:
I'm very curious to see how it flows in there.
Click to expand...

My fight prediction is that the EK block will flow better but give worse temps :P the EK block is a serial high flow set up whereas the AC is a parallel set up with more restrictive fins, as parallel by nature halves the flow rate it means coolant will be crossing the GPU's much slower than on the EK block however as the path is split and rejoined in the block the in to out flow rate shouldn't be affected (except by the extra restriction of the GPU fins ofc).

My guess would be that in a low flow/weak pump situation the EK would perform the best but with higher flow/pressure the AC will pull ahead. Only wildcard I can see is that only one of the the ACs parallel pathways crosses the VRM's.
 
You (or me) may be surprised at the flow rate of the AC block.
On the little test loop I made with the card on it's edge with the port side edge at the top, it managed to easily fill and flow out to the rad just by me filling the reservoir and the water then passively going through the pump and up to the block. Hope that makes sense.

You're right about the VRM's though. The EK has both sets covered properly, whereas the AC only has one.

I may actually have to do this test now :D
 
Btw, if I do get this done, are there any particular tests/benches you guys would like me to do?
I was just going to give them a long loop on heaven/valley and maybe 3dmark or something.
Anything except furmark/kombustor :D
 
Might be a stupid question but do you need any extra brackets to support the weight of the block on the graphics card?

I'm going to build my first wc loop over christmas and was surprised how heavy the gpu water block is.
 
Erm... With the EK block, I doubt it.
With the AC block, maybe a tad.
I have the AC block installed on a card at the moment and when I did a test fit in my PC, it looked straight enough without any sag using both screws in the pci bracket.
It's more the length of these things in combination with the weight that makes it a potential issue.
If the PC is going to be moved around, I'd say yes. If not, you should be ok.
 
ubersonic said:
Can you do an Antalus flyby with the UT2003 demo please :)
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Really? Somehow, I don't think UT2k3 requires a 7990 :D
Now I have to download it to see what happens... It's been a while since I've played that.

ED: LOL, that was a blast from the past. I had to edit the ini to even get it to run at 1080, but surprisingly, it does utilize xfire. Around 45% gpu usage (surprising tbh) and about 8% cpu usage. Temps were barely above idle and I've no idea what fps were :D

weewyum said:
Just bought the EK block, look foward to seeing these results!
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Me too :)
The bad news is that it's more than likely that the only results I'll be able to provide will be with mining temps :(
They'll be running on a test bench with their own dedicated loops using identical rads/fans/pumps if that makes it any better.

Sorry, I've had to rebuild my own loop twice in the last couple of days and while I did plan to stick these in one at a time to do some tests, it just proved to be more hassle than it was worth...
 
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No problem, might have to start mining now to recoup the costs so will be useful :p

GPU1 currently reaches over 90c and idles at ~50c in a carbide 540 which is pretty dissapointing with the amount of air travelling through.. Loud too :( Will let you know what temps are like gaming when its set up, will be in its own loop with a 360mm rad so should be quite tasty!
 
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