Bitcoin Forum

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/PowerColor-Unveils-Radeon-HD-6990-LCS/5610

Anyone try one yet?

Don't buy pre-wc cards from manufacturers, they are usually not as good and more expensive than you doing it yourself.

I have 2 6990's in a wc loop with EK blocks...I actually got them for gaming before I found out about Bitcoin. They rock! Play any game maxed no prob, even with 3 screen EyeFinity :D

I've got the koolance block and love it.

There is a good reason gpu's are rated at specific maximum temps, because they are able to run at high temps.

If you run a gpu 24/7 at 80c you might lose a month or two on its maximum lifespan compared to having a gpu running at 35-45c

Overclocking wise the lower temps wont help either for maximum overclock, on air with maximum allowed voltage without custom voltmodding the cards you will get the same maximum overclock albeit the watercooled might run 25-30c cooler.

To mine, its a waste of money.

That's not true. Lower temps = higher overclock. If you take a stock 6990 and try to push 1.3v 1050mhz, you will go over 100C and it will shut down/start to malfucntion. Plus that cuts much more than just 1-2 months. Constant over 100C will break your card very fast. WC is not useless you know -.- We can hit the 1050mhz with 60-70 temps which is insanely good. That's faster than two 6970's in crossfire, and more.

Erm you are suggesting all cards are capable of 1.3+ voltage, you are wrong. In rare cases if you do get a 1.3v+ capable card, this might apply to you however the majority of cards running at maximum 1.275v wont see any benefit of this watercooling magik. Not to mention, above 1.3v you do not get a good return on heat/powerusage/performance.

Im not sure what hellpit you run your cards in, I am running at 1.275v @ 1150/1250 on hd5850 crunching at 445mhash/s @ 75c peak on stock cooler(i just reseated it, relapped it) for the "extremely high cost" of $180.

Do your research, watercooling is a waste of money when you compare mhash per $ spend.

Agreed! For the $120-180 spend on a good waterblock I can get another 5850 or 5870! (albeit used). Water cooling makes sense only where noise is the issue like say in you bedroom. If you've got dedicated mining machines air cooling is just fine. Simply increase the fan speed and put the machines in a place out of sight and out of mind where the noise the fans produce won't bother you and that's it. Also don't forget to remove the dust buildup in the fans once in a while.

So in conclusion what I'm saying is that watercooling your mining GPUs is another example of the e-peen effect ;)

I don't see any reason why you would regret doing it if noise isolation is that important to you. It's your money. In the end you must do to get what you want as your expected outcome. However bear in mind that with water cooling although you don't have to worry about airflow IN YOUR CASE you still have to worry about airflow outside it - or more specifically the temp of the room in which the radiator block is located. Cool thing about water cooling is that you can have a radiator pretty far away from the heat source (ie waterblock) if you have a strong enough pump. I've seen a thread on here of some dude that used a car radiator mounted outside :)

Another advantage of watercooling is the increased card density you can achieve in one single system. You can do this with air too but you're going to run your cards much much hotter.

I used to do something similar to this a couple of years back when I used to be into the whole overclocking(too much time on your hands) lifestyle.

Only difference, I build my mineral oil cooling rig into a mini bar fridge and kept it chilled at around 10c, come to think of it this made me think about doing that again :)

This is better and far cheaper than any watercooling solutions.

http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

wow that looks pretty wicked...:) If anything you'll get bonus points for having the coolest looking miner :)

Checked out that website and I gotta say I love this quote "However, we do not recommend running anything close to this hot, as the acrylic can easily crack at that temperature".. :D

Check out version 3, I dont know why it took them so long to not add cooled mineral oils and I agree 80+ is stupid high lol but they do prove the concept well.

In a mini bar fridge (cost about $150) you allready have the cooling element and housing case. At the time I never got to finish my custom backplate etc. so I simply ran all the cables directly from inside thru the door seals, so if I took some extra time I could have had something much more efficient haha

If/when you get this oil rig (har har I made a joke :P) running please do post some pics :)

I might consider it in the next month or two, no rush here. I was mainly stating something I used to do and have done before for interest sake :)

So with these single slot width cards would it be possible to run 5 cards in a rig?

buy PCie swith and plug up to 8 from one PCIe slot :P
buy cheap 6670 u and plug them like confetti :P
or $110 6850 with passive/massive cooler :-)