WW kicks ***: BillA test results.

In case there were any doubts:

BillA's test results show that Cathar's White Water block stomps any other commercial block Bill has tested.

And that's regardless of what the rest of the setup is composed of. (Pump and Rad)

Test results here.

Yep, I knew it did all along, good for others to be able to see proper 'proof'.

I woud like to see DodgeVipers modified tc-4 tested.

Cathar's block really kicked ***, I thought it was gonna come out on top, but not by that much!

Well there goes the under 100 dollar project.
Great job Canthars. You deserve it
Too bad it costs double what a Maze 3 costs.

BillA left an unanswered question, which PUMP is best for White Water?

Currently I am using Eheim 1250, is it enough? or I should get Eheim 1260 or the Iwaki MDRLT 20?

Impressive indeed. I also felt like he flirted with the pump question but didn't answer it completely. Either way, Bill's unbiased testing only helps us see that nothing currently touches the WW in normal water cooling setups.

EluSiOn said:

BillA left an unanswered question, which PUMP is best for White Water?

Currently I am using Eheim 1250, is it enough? or I should get Eheim 1260 or the Iwaki MDRLT 20?

Click to expand...

If you compare the headloss chart for the block, and the PQ curve of the 1250, you'll find that you can expect a flow rate of 7 lpm. That of course assumes that there are no other restrictions...

If you add the curve for a typical heatercore, from BillA's radiator roundup, you'll have a more accurate answer. As a rough estimate, you'd be lucky to get 4 lpm (1.0 gph), which would give you a C/W of 0.19 (assuming that the block is mounted properly).

So if your heatsource is 70 Watts, you can expect a CPU temp of about 13 degrees C above your coolant.

(I think that's right...)

If you were able to double the flow rate, your CPU temp would only drop by about one degree C.

EluSiOn said:

BillA left an unanswered question, which PUMP is best for White Water?

Currently I am using Eheim 1250, is it enough? or I should get Eheim 1260 or the Iwaki MDRLT 20?

Click to expand...

If you are just running the WW block and a heatercore, your flowrate should be around 6.5lpm with the WW and the 1250. This is confirmed with Cathar's testing with the 1250. Running the MD-20RLT 'may' get your flow up close to 10lpm so just look at the graph and see where it all falls.

bigben2k said:

If you were able to double the flow rate, your CPU temp would only drop by about one degree C.

Click to expand...

And doubling your flowrate means increasing the head of your pump by a factor of 4.

An Iwaki MD20-RZT won't quite deliver four times the head of an Eheim 1250. (The Iwaki will be operating in a more efficent area of its PQ curve though. For what that's worth.)

What's it look like inside?

I'd like to see photos of how the block is built on the inside. Is it a three layer block as it appears in the single photo? What does the water course look like?

Most enlightening.
Some rambling:
Perhaps get reasonable agreement using the Flomerics Round Jet Impingement Average "h" over 7.5mm radius as the Convection Coeff .

.Perhaps not unreasonable to treat a 3mm Slot crossed by 1mm channels as segments(wrong word) of a 3mm circle.
Calculating on the basis of the entry velocity through eight 3x1mm channels and using Kryotherm(what else) to convert the Convection Coeffs to "h (bp to water)" and using this as the "Film Coeffs h" in Waterloo get :-

A lot fantasy but.....

EDIT: Updated/corrected graph - Corrected misinterpretation of Kryotherm's "Base Irregularity Coeff (BI)"( Changed to BI=1.0 from BI=1.2)

GoingH2o said:

http://www.teamster469.com/images/prod2.jpg

Click to expand...

That photo is similar, http://www.employees.org/~slf/lrwb/whitewater.html, to the one posted on White Water's web site.

What it doesn't show, is what the block looks like on the inside.

From the photo, it looks like the water block is built up from three layers of thin copper plates.

Working out flow-rates from BillA's test results

(<-- I'm grinning and blushing at the same time)

In order to answer the flow rates and hence pump selection question, I'll post a summary version of a post I made over at Overclocker's Australia on this subject, which basically explains how to work this stuff out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill's data typical consists of two important graphs. The "flow vs C/W" graphs, and the "flow vs pressure-drop" graphs.

Looking at the White Water review we find the following:

Flow vs Head-loss (Pressure drop)



Flow vs C/W



Where it can get tricky is attempting to predict where one will fall in terms of flow rate. Every 0.01 C/W difference correlates to anywhere from 0.5-1.1C full-load temperature differences depending on how aggressively one over-clocks/over-volts their CPU.

In order to answer the flow-rate question, we must have a pump's PQ (flow vs pressure-drop) chart handy. For the Eheim 1046, 1048 and 1250, these charts look like the following:



So how does one predict how much flow they'll get? First it's important to understand the pressure drop increases roughly proportional with the square of a flow rate increase. If you attempt to double the flow rate, you will enounter 4 times the pressure-drop resistance. If you half the flow rate, you get one quarter of the pressure-drop resistance. This is nice, because it means that even fairly restrictive blocks can still benefit from decent volumetric flow rates because the pressure backs off quite rapidly if the flow rate is dropped by even smallish amounts.

The best place to start is to first figure out how much flow you have through your pump, and then your pump/heater-core.

For my Eheim 1250, it pushes 14lpm through 2m of Tygon tubing alone, and 12lpm through 2m of tubing and my "Big Arse" heater-core which has 1/2" fittings of 11mm inner diameter. ie. the heater-core has fairly low restriction fittings on it.

Looking at the 1250's PQ curve above we see that 14lpm translates to about a 0.85m pressure drop, and 12lpm translates to about a 1.2m pressure-drop.

Now the pressure drop of a full system is the sum of it's individual pressure drops. In order to work with pressure drops as a result of differing flow rates, we need to bring them all back to an arbitrary reference flow rate. Let's choose 10lpm as a fairly convenient flow rate.

At 10lpm, the pump + 2m of tubing exhibits 0.85m / ((14/10) * (14/10)), or 0.85m / 1.96, or 0.43m of pressure drop. Much of this pressure drop resistance will actually be due to the pump's barbs/fittings as a pump's PQ curve is calculated without the barbs in place.

At 10lpm the pump + 2m of tubing + the heater-core exhibits 1.2m ((12/10) * (12/10)), or 1.2m / 1.44, or 0.83m of pressure drop.

ie. At 10lpm, the heater-core itself offers a pressure drop resistance of 0.4m (being 0.83 - 0.43 = 0.4)

The above gives us a good idea of what the pressure drop resistances of various items in our system.

Okay, so how about if we now plug the White Water block into the system?

At our 10lpm mark, the White Water offers around 3.25m of pressure-drop. In our hypothetical full system, the total pressure-drop at 10lpm is 0.83 + 3.25, or around 4.2m of pressure-drop.

Working out some data points to plot against the 1250's PQ graph.

10lpm => 4.2m PD
9lpm => 3.4m PD
8lpm => 2.7m PD
7lpm => 2.06m PD
6lpm => 1.51m PD

Looking at the 1250's PQ curve, we can see that it's going to push somewhere between 6 and 7lpm. So let's work around there:

6.5lpm => 1.77m PD

Actually this pretty much meets up with the 1250's PQ line almost exactly.

So we can predict that the 1250 will push about 6.5lpm in our hypothetical setup.

In real life, I measured 6.7 in this exact setup. The differences are probably due to my measuring errors, but the theory and the in-practise values do seem to meet up quite nicely within a 3% margin of error.

So with an Eheim 1250 you'll be at or slightly below the 0.18 C/W mark.

With an Eheim 1048, it works out to around 4.9lpm. With an Iwaki MD-20RZ you'll get close to 10lpm (haven't done the exact math at this time).

It appears that cathars base is too thin, dont ya think? it looks like the base is bowing under the pressure exerted on it if you look at that picture of the flattness thingy.
It looks pretty dang good man! I gotta go compare some graphs

The non-flatness is caused by thermal expansion during the lapping process. We're talking about 1/100th the thickness of a sheet of paper here over the size of the entire block.

The base does not "bow" due to mounting pressure as the base is braced by the middle plate via the tops of the fins.

Cathar, did you have problems with using plastic as your cover? I noticed you had posted some pictures of a waterblock at ocau which used clear plastic covers.

Secondly, aside from the dual exhaust ports, did you change the water course design beyond the clear plastic?

Now that we can finally see just how well the WW performs, it's time for the "Attack of the Clones". I'm looking forward to seeing how well the DIY versions compare to "The Master".

I also imagine we're going to start seeing alot of companies coming out with "their version" of the WW in the near future. It's either that or they'll have to fold up shop. I think if Cathar finds a way to make the WW (or version of) alittle cheaper, it would soon become a One Block World.

Freeloader said:

I also imagine we're going to start seeing alot of companies coming out with "their version" of the WW in the near future. It's either that or they'll have to fold up shop. I think if Cathar finds a way to make the WW (or version of) alittle cheaper, it would soon become a One Block World.

Click to expand...

*chuckle* Like they havn't already. Cathar is still the little DIY guy so I think he'll get much better respect. Plus his is all copper construction and from the looks of it he put's alot of detailed work into it. It's actually priced competively, it's just the exporting to the states that I know of adds to the price. I know of couple blocks from Aus. that have the same price as the WW here in the states, performs worse and seems a bit shoddy in construction. If you want the best you pay for the best

What will make it cheaper? Everyone buying more WW over competitors blocks. LOL

T think this block is THE block

I've just installed my white water block a few days ago... now I had to do some testing so I haven't had the time to post my results.... Before I placed the block I had a AVC Sunflower modified with a TDM High speed fan. My max overclock was getting windows to post at 3Ghz but I couldnt work compleately stable at more than 2.85 this with a temp at full load of 63 C.
At that time I had my Vcore set to 1.7 (1.68 more or less real), I didn't want to go higher because of those high temps...

So now I intall the WW, Eheim 1250 pump, 2lt of reservoir (more or less), and two maxxpert radiators with 120mm fans....

Actualy I can post windows at 3215 more or less, but I am 100% stable at 3125, all this with 1.8 Vcore I have a temp of 47 C iddle and 52-54 full load, my water temp is around 27 C. I know this temp readings could look a little odd but consider that the IT-7 nevver had acurate temp readings.
So what is my conclusion, well see it for yourself, in the overclockers database not many reached the 3200 with this CPU... My conclusion is that this waterblock is worth every penny they are asking for it....
In the next month I will probably build another P4 watercooled system....I have no questions on what will be my other waterblock WHITE WATER

Great job Cathar