Swiftech & EVGA Classified GeForce GTX 590 Water Block Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,352 words · ~6 min read
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today I have kind of a special unboxing
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from well I don't know I don't know who to tell you it's from because this is
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more of a collaborative effort between two different companies I've actually
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got two of them but I'll only be doing an overview of one so the first thing we
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see when I open it up is a back plate so
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this is an EVGA back plate says GeForce GTX 590 on it okay so we got some gaps
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in the back for cooling the various components we've also got all the places
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for screws to mount on it this is like a brushed aluminum look looks just
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outstanding on the other side of it we've got thermal pads for all the
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memory spots that need to be covered
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which leads us to a piece of Styrofoam and then finally well not really finally
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it didn't take that long the EVGA classified GeForce GTX 590
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water block sorry about that so why
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don't we have a look at the accessories that are included first we've got two
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stubby 1/2 in fittings right there so these go into
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the G1 qu threads you can arrange them any way you want whether you want them
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both on this side both on the opposite side or you
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can do one one way and one the other way whatever works best for the way your
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tubing is routed next we've got a couple of Stoppers so you take those Stoppers
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and you put them opposite where the fittings are so you go like
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this so that it doesn't just go straight through the card and spray all over your
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motherboard got some mounting hardware got a couple little uh lock washers got
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some little screws there so you'll need that in order to mount the block finally
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some thermal compound so the thermal compound will only in a case like this
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be for the GPU locations themselves and
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not for all of the memory and vrm and
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other components that are on the PCB of the video card so let's have a look at
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the construction of this product overall and so far I've only gotten to the EVGA
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part of the collaboration but as soon as I remove this piece of plastic right
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here it will become more apparent who
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the other co- conspirator is in creating
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this product see there powered by swifttech so that is machined into the
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delin so this is a very very durable block for a couple of reasons many water
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blocks over the past you know as long as people have been water cooling are
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constructed from a copper base so here
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you can see this is a copper base plated with nickel nickel is not harmful to
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your water cooling Loop because it is close enough to Copper that you're not
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going to have problems with corrosion okay so what that basically means is it
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is safe to mix a loop with nickel blocks and copper blocks whereas it is not safe
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to mix a loop with copper blocks and aluminum blocks so remember that you
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guys okay also on the top instead of using a Plexi
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top which is a clear top swifttech has
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opted to go with a delin or atile top
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which means that the odds of it cracking
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are basically nothing with Plexi especially around the fittings like
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around here sometimes if people crank the uh the barbs in too tight for
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example you know just tighten that down really hard uh what can happen is you
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can have little micro cracks form around it from the pressure delin is a very
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very durable material and I would be floored if you could actually manage to
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uh to damage a delin back or a delin
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topped water block that way so I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to take
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off part of this because I don't want to make too much of a mess of these before
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I'm ready to install them on the cards now normally you can only get a block
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like this with an EVGA classified 590 card but because I already have
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cards right here 590s I uh asked dvga to
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send me just the blocks for this particular uh showcase so I'm going to
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show you guys the uh the mirror shot check that out I mean look look how
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reflective this thing is very very beautiful surface machined on there so
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how does the technology actually work here well Swift Tech's been making
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blocks for pretty much as long as anyone's been making commercial grade
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blocks so the design is very simple but
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very effective so now with a single GPU
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card the design of a full cover block is
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fairly simple it needs to get a little bit of of water flow over the vrm
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components which are generally at the back of the card it's a little bit you know not not a huge deal you go away
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thank you um so a little bit of cooling there because those components do get
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hot under air cooling but under water cooling it's a it's a breeze it's no big
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deal and then they need to Route the water around to the center of the card
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and then out the out the outlet so in the inlet around to the center of the
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card where the GPU is located and then out the outlet now with a dual GPU card
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it's a little bit more complicated so the water path in this particular block
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goes in one and it doesn't really matter which in one goes through a pin Matrix a
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very tight pin Matrix here which is around one of the
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gpus okay which actually has a like a
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Blocker on the delin top in order to accelerate the water as it flows around
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the GPU itself then it widens out again
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okay so it flows quite easily here and then it goes under another another tight
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um a tight covering from the top through another pin Matrix and then out the
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outlet so why does swifttech do this the reason is that cooling performance is
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dramatically better when you restrict the flow of the water so it flows faster
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over the parts that need to be cooled the most so why don't they do it
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throughout the entire block well that's a smart design design decision as well
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what that would mean if they had the entire block restrictive and impinging
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and jetting the water onto the uh
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surface of the water block to cool the card would make this block very
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restrictive so it would mean in order to run a couple of these blocks with dual
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590s in a loop you would need like a couple pumps in order to just get the
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water through there at a reasonable
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velocity uh last but not least we've also got a glowing EVGA logo up here at
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the top so that's going to look pretty good when it's installed in my Ultimate
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machine which I will be building over the next little while and that is lit up
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using the fan header on the PCB itself
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so we got a little cord there I don't know if I mentioned this already but on
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the back you can see all of the RAM cooling spots as well as uh thermal pads
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to cover the vrm portion of the cooling on the back so thank you for checking
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out my unboxing and overview of the EVGA classified GTX 590 block don't forget to
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get one of these you will have to buy an EVGA gForce GTX 590 classified water
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cooled Edition card thank you for checking it out don't forget to subscribe to lineus techtips from
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