I had finally built a game machine that I think will last for many years, a machine that could still be upgraded in the future.



The only thing I could see that needed improvement was the cooling solution for my 8800 GTX SLI cards because the stock solution is not adequate. There were times that they would hit 89C while playing games, I don’t think that speaks well for longevity. So I started looking for a solution and came to the conclusion that air was not going to work. I had notice that BFG had water cooled cards that they were selling and knew that it wouldn’t be long before others would start manufacturing similar blocks to replace air coolers. In March Tom’s Hardware had and article “A Beginner's Guide for Water Cooling Your PC” which featured the EXOS-2 external water cooling system and I was impressed by it. I then went to Koolance’s site to see what they had and found they also had a full coverage GPU block for 8800 GTX and it would be available on April 6. So I built an order on their site and patiently waited for the blocks to become available.
I mentioned this on one of the forums on Tom’s Hardware and had a bunch of people tell me how Koolance’s produces were nothing more than over priced toy’s made with crappie material. Well, from what I read on Koolance’s site, I didn’t believe that could be true and when the blocks became available on April 4 I ordered everything from them and again waited patiently six days as it was shipped to me. I thought that the price I paid was reasonable (563.37 + 20.09 shipping) even with the extra parts I ordered to make the external unit detachable, in case I had to make changes to the internal cooling. It all arrived on April 10 nicely packaged, I open it to find everything I ordered and everything looked fine.





I took my time installing the system and thought to my self, that you would have to be a moron to put this water cooling system in your machine and have a leak.









After I installed everything I added the liquid with no problem and ran the pump until all the bubbles were gone.





Now came the moment of true will it really do the job I bought it for. I turned on the machine and about a minute into the boot up on the display there was a message “no video signal”, I thought it must be a driver problem but after 10 minutes of trouble shooting I came to the conclusion that I must have installed the GPU coolers wrong. I was glad I made the external unit detachable and with the 2 extra female shut off vales it was easy to drain the internal loop.



( This problem Has been fixed by Koolance the third one I bought for my triple SLI worked perfectly)
What I found when I took off the first block was unbelievable the surface of the block was not even touching the GPU, there was no thermal grease on it from the GPU and this was true of the other block.
I called Koolance’s tech support and they told me to request and RMA which I did only to find out it would be 24 to 48 hours to get a number so I could ship them back at my own cost. I called them back and asked why, they said it was just a disclaimer but here it is almost 24 hour’s later and I still don’t have a number. I also ask what if the ones they send are bad also will I be left without a gaming machine for weeks on end, answer you can always put the stock coolers on. Really? I think he should’ve thought about that answer a little longer. I sent this part of my review to their support in an email and about 10 minutes later I had a RMA number. I sent off the two water blocks Fed-X next day Friday morning delivery which cost me $64, I know it’s a lot, but if I hadn’t done it that way, it would mean I’d have to wait 2 or 3 weeks in stead of a week.
Friday when I got home from my part time job and checked the Fed-X web site I saw they delivered my GPU water blocks to Koolance at 9am west coast time. I waited until the after noon and called them at 2:30pm there time 4:30 my time and they said they would get them out today. I expected them to ship them back to me at least two day shipping but when I checked with them the following week on Tuesday I found out they shipped them ground and I wouldn’t get them until Thursday. Their customer service is not very good for a mistake they made in their manufacturing; I guess they just don’t really want people buying their stuff.
That gave me plenty of time to dress the wiring inside the system better and I also made the external water tubes longer and refilled the unit. I wanted to mount the EXOS-2 away from the system because case was not made to have anything sitting on top of it. Also I replace the double spaced L-bracket on the GTX cards with a single spaced bracket.

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At 2:45 pm the UPS truck pulled up with my coolers and I was ready to install them only to find out I had the same problem. So I immediately called Koolance tech support and this time they told me that the tolerances of the board’s between manufactures was not as tight as it should be so they worked with some boards and not with others. They said they contacted NVIDIA about it but hadn’t hard back from them yet. They said I should grind 1mm off the four stand off’s around the GPU and that would fix the problem. I did as they suggested and installed them and they worked amazingly well, they dropped my idle temps from 70C down to 45C, Serious Sam 2 from a game high 89C down to 69C, none of the games get above what I idled at before. I think a better way for them to fix the problem , rather then have the customer grind down the stand offs, send different size stand offs with the cooling blocks.

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Remember if you do this to keep all the parts you take off the graphics in case they should go bad because if your using a card made by EVGA as I am they want it back the way you got it.

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Over all I like Koolance’s system, I like the looks of it, the easy of the way it goes together, and I especially like the hose connectors because they make it virtually impossible to have a leak unless you do something really stupid.

I looked at the bottom picture and saw only one tube going into the lower video card and I thought to myself, "What's going on here?" A closer look reveals a water link between the two cards like "SLI Watercooling" Neat!

Windows Vista Premium
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (no OC)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC
Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400 2X1GB DDR2-800
Western Digital 150GB Raptor x2
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro Series
Dell E207WFP & Samsung SyncMaster 213T
Asus Striker Extreme Motherboard
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR
Silverstone Temjin TJ07 with window
Pioneer DVR-212D DVD/CD Writer
APC Back-UPS XS 1000
Various trick lighting, rubber grommets, & LEDs

bttt

did you check the card that had no cooling wiht the stock coolers to make sure ti still worked, man, i would eb shit scared if that had happened, i know how hot my x1950xtx gets and i've heard they get even hotter.

That's interesting. Hope you can get it all set up. I've heard many times that Koolance's customer service is pretty poor.

The tech support was helpful.

Is anyone using the Koolance CPU-330 cooling block and what are your temps?

I was wondering if you could tell me what water cooling setup you have for your cpu???I'm looking for a decent water cooling system(one better than the one I have).

Dahak
AMD X2-4400+@2.6 TOLEDO
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X EVGA 7950GT KO IN SLI
4X 512MB CRUCIAL BALLISTIX DDR500
WD300GIG HD/SAMSUNG 250GIG HD
ACER 22IN WIDESCREEN LCD 1600X1200
THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850WATT PSU
COOLERMASTER MINI R120
3DMARK05 13,471

What water cooling system do you have now? I use the Koolance CPU-330.

Well, I was less lucky than you…

I set up a SLI WC with the exact same koolance waterblock. However, as I didn t make any mistake during the setup, I started to use my system.
Because I had vista, I didn t go to check my temp on ntune. That was a terrible mistake, after one hour gaming, I start to see blue dots all over the screen and image flickering!!!
I thought it was again something weird coming from newest Nvidia drivers, but when I re-started the computer….Dots all over the BIOS boot!!!!!

Of course I checked immediately each block to realize that nevertheless I respected Koolance procedure my good artic silver 5 only made a tiny mark on the waterblock…
I have stop using the SETUP and I put back air cooler and waited a few days. Now the graphic cards are working fine again (probably because I hopefully didn t try again).
However I have this useless expensive waterblock and I want to use them again.

Can you please tell me how you grind the square around the GPU? I mean 1 mm grinding need some precision, I don t want to miss something and kill definitely a card. I m sure that next time I ll smell the carbon if it doesn t make proper contact…

Also I had the same problem with the other card when I replaced the air cooler, it seems that the heavy ugly thermal pad is not thick for nothing. Fine layer of artic 5 might be dangerous with some 8800 gtx air cooler. Is there someone who had the same problem?

See the four stand offs posts that are around where the GPU would touch the block, take a small hand grinder and grind 1mm or 1/32 of and inch off of each of them. Even if you take a little too much off you will be ok because you’re going to put those screws in first and you can’t over tighten those screws.
I use this software to see my GPU & CPU temps.
http://www.lavalys.com/products/ov [...] UE&lang=en

ZOMG! Gravity hack! How did you do that?

Awesome system, wish I had that kind of money.

On the bottom of the unit are slots for strapping it to a case I just used wire tires on the cross brace of that table.

With some better organization and maybe 1 or 2 more better case fans and your temps could have dropped a lot. Just by looking at the case its a clear indication that there was no airflow which was the main result of your temps being so high. Regardless your watercooling setup looks nice and i'm glad you actually got it all to work in thend.

If you will notice there is a raid controller card at the bottom of the mother board that helped trap heat and caused much of the problem and no matter how many fans I put in it, it would not have fixed the problem.

Water cooling....... not for the faint of heart or the impatient.
The water chillers I'm building for sale would work great with that system, that's why my rig is so cool. It goes colder but it's not really required. it was 80 F in my room yesterday and my water was at 35 F.
By the way, nice job, play on.

Thanks Baddad,

It has been really easy and the system is working fine now.
This koolance waterblock reminds me LS phase change setup where the explanation on the manual is so light about insulation that you have most of the chance to froze you motherboard at your first try (100% warranty with their setup in humid country).
Such a warning about different cards shape should definitely be with the packages of these waterblocks.
Or at least something on their website.
Patience is something required for checking leakages and organizing the case in the way where troubles will be avoided. Watercooling is not difficult thing nowdays especially with the quality of some brands in the market.
Finishing the shape of the waterblock is not really something you guess until you get troubleshooting. You expect it to “fit” the card it is made for.
Still waiting answer from Koolance about this issue and by the way I’ll warn the shops in Akiba about it.

I see on Koolance's site that they show that water block out of stock until 4-30 so I think they must be fixing the problem with them. I'm happy that you got yours working, enjoy.