Date:
Thursday , January 18, 2007
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTX Water Cooled Edition

We take a look at what BFGTech's 8800 GTX Water Cooled Edition delivers in terms of cooling performance and system security. Are 150 watt video cards forcing water cooling into the mainstream? If you are considering 8800 SLI you need to read this.

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Assembly & Testing

The BFGTech 8800 GTX WCE comes from the factory pre-tested. This means they checked the waterblock for integrity and that it is properly mated to the video card. A waterblock that is not mated properly is of little value to cooling and certainly a danger to your system. The hose barbs however are not installed. You will need the appropriate wrench to do this job.

Be sure not to over tighten the barbs. The O-rings simply need to be somewhat compressed between the nipple shoulder and waterblock to achieve a seal. Also if you are one of those guys with heavy hands, you will want to be careful that you do not bind against the Allen/Hex head screws that protrude around the threaded inlets. I would like to see Danger Den countersink those bolt heads in the next revision, but it is certainly not anything that is a deal breaker.

Also, depending on your setup, you have several choices for which way you will install your hose barbs as to what direction you want them to point. Obviously this will depend on how you want to route your hoses. The only wrong configuration would be to have both hoses plumbed into the same inlet side while having the other side fully capped. As long as the nipples are not installed 180° of each other, your configuration is correct. You must of course cap the threaded inlets that are not being used.

If you are going to route the tubing directly between two cards as shown below, you will want to make sure you measure carefully. I would suggest putting the cards into the motherboard’s SLI slots then at the very least mocking the tubing into place.

Using the supplied clamps should make attaching your hose or tubing very easy. You will notice in the following pictures that our configuration does not have proper clamps installed. The clamps supplied by BFGTech would not clamp down on our ˝” OD tubing. This oversight has now been corrected by BFGTech. We used “zip ties” to secure our tubing to our hose barbs. This is not a suggested solution, but they work very well if you take some care during installation as they have the tendency to pinch the hose or tubing at the fastener.

I highly suggest you test the cooling loop without the cards installed in your case. To do this you will either have to build the system outside the case then later break it down to reinstall it, or leave yourself enough slack in your tubing to allow you to spin up the cooling system with the card(s) out of the case. If you have the ability to leave slack in the hose, instead of cutting to exact length, it will likely make the installation process much easier and removes the risk of spilt coolant.

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Let’s take it for granted that BFGTech has done their job in testing these blocks for leakage at the factory. And quite frankly, this is one of the things you are paying them to do, so the blocks better damn well not leak. But it is up to the end user to install these cards correctly. With a single card configuration you will have 6 possible leak points, and of course with an SLI setup as shown above, you will have 12 possible leak points. These points are where YOU screwed in either a plug or a hose barb and then where the hose attaches to a barb. BFGTech has no control over these connections. It is 100% up to you to make sure the job is done right.

I am not saying this to scare you, but to rather point out that it is better to test your cooling setup outside of your case if you can. Water cooling a computer is not as risky as it may sound, but that risk is greatly lessened if you check your work before installing. Be patient, take your time, and do not get in a rush. Obviously any enthusiast with $800 or $1600 worth of video card sitting in front of them wants to see it in action ASAP. Unless you want to risk destroying it all instantly as water leaks down into your equipment, we highly suggest that you first test your system outside of the case.

It’s Alive!

Below you can see our BFGTech WCE cards after they had tubing installed and have been successfully leak tested for an hour.

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It worth noting here that you should turn the cards “upside down” during testing. That way if you do have leak issues, the leaked coolant is not going to drain down into the space between the card and the waterblock. We had no leaks on our first try, but if we had, we would have only ended up with a towel wet with coolant. Water cooling your video cards and computer can be safe if you make sure to test your systems before you use them.