H220 + GTX580 EK FULL COVER BLOCK
After seeing what the H220 could do with a little assistance from another radiator, I really wanted to see if we could get away with just adding a full cover GPU block to the H220 loop. This seems like the next likely upgrade for most people after changing out tubing.
What I found:
Ambient temps: 22.78C/73F
Max overclock: 4.8 ghz/1.472V vCore
IBT temps: 79.25C core average
What happened, is exactly what I expected. There simply is not enough radiator surface area from the single slim 240mm radiator to handle the heat in the loop. It was so hot under IBT load the system froze and crashed. I was forced to lower the overclock and voltage to 4.8 ghz at 1.472V. Even with these much lower settings it was still quite hot.
Next I ran Uningine Valley again to see what would happen to the GPU:
Ambient temps: 22.78C/73F
Max overclock: 4.8 ghz/1.472V vCore
Uningine Valley CPU temps: 66C core average
Uningine Valley GPU temps: 54C
As you can see our benchmark temperature results were about 10 degrees C hotter than when we had the RX 240 in the loop. Not very awesome results, but not very surprising either considering the low surface area of the radiator.
The reason your temps went up after you replaced the tubing was because you used smaller diameter tubing. Also, I’d be interested to see the results obtained with the full loop (sans second radiator) if you used tubing matching the original dimensional specs. Using smaller inner diameter tubing adds significantly to the flow restriction of the loop, which can (and will) negatively impact cooling performance secondary to degradation of pump pressure. A good article, though. It’s refreshing to see a review site hold a manufacturer to their word. Swiftech’s was that you could add cooling blocks to the H220, and, indeed you can. I’ve been wondering when one of the AIO producers would quit screwing around and switch to copper radiator. Kudos to Swiftech for taking that next (if obvious) step.
strapmonkey
Glad you enjoyed the review!
Actually though we did use the same inner diameter tubing as what came with the cooler. Ours simply had smaller outer diameter. This really should not have any impact on temps or flow at all. It was very interesting that the temps were negatively impacted by the change.