Hardware ECS Hydra Watercooled 9800 GTX+ SLI pack

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/10/09/ecs-hydra-watercooled-9800-gtx-sli-pack/1

Water, water everywhere! Well, only if you've fitted it wrong! We take a look at a pre-watercooled pair of 9800 GTX+ cards in SLI from ECS to see if they can compete with the newer GPUs. Can the 9800 GTX+ ride the wave of awesome frame rates, or is it just all washed out? We find out!

 

Well let me be the first to say, "What the hell!?!?"
What sort of nutter would buy that pack, you could build much the same thing for cheaper, probably get better results and have the satisfaction of knowing you had done it.

 

And it probably wouldn't fall apart either.

 

What the hell is that?

It's not a graphics card pack. Can't be. Even OEM cards made from match sticks and epoxy look better than those things :/

Probably perform better too..

 

What the hell were they thinking, looks like crap.

 

Three reasons to not buy that Thermaltake WC solution (or in this case the cards that have it bundled) and all without even comparing it to a real wc solution... wow.. that has to be some kind of negative rec for Thermaltake.

 

I saw this last month in one of the PC gaming mags here in Oz. My first reaction was "OMG crap in a box" lol, sadly I wasn't mistaken. A few years back when I knew absolutely nothing about water cooling I considered a Thermaltake system with that GPU block to cool my 8800GTX. Thankfully I looked up Danger Den and my tastes have been getting more expensive ever since lol.

 

Sounds like its time to bust out the volt modding walkthrough using these cards! Or would that piss somebody off who wants these cards back?

 

It's utter crap, isn't it? Just my 2 cents ofc... I just don't see why and who would ever buy this?

 

I dont know where to begin because there appear to be so many flaws? What a mess.

Fistly why bother with the fans on the water blocks...they really dont get what water cooling is about!
Secondly why then choose to use a molex to power the fan's...did they forget about the fan header on the PCB?
Thirdly why use a monstrosity of a fan on the radiator...again they really dont get what water cooling is about!

This is clearly aimed at someone who has not got the foggiest about anything really :|

 

ouch! ECS got fragged lol They should know better, in this day and age you can't put out a shoddy product.

 

Interesting, Guru3D seemed to like it...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/ecs-geforce-9800-gtx-hydra-sli/1

 

Loving the Full cover blocks with Fans...... i mean really WTF.....

 

Bizarre, it's like we were looking at two different products.

 

I've had too much to drink to work out if you're being sarcy.. Advice plz.

 

interesting idea but very poor execution used to have a thermaltake water cooling kit they are bad to put it politely

 

Well, their opinion is almost the polar opposite of ours, so either we were unlucky, they were lucky, or we looked at two different products. I suppose my comment was a little sarcy, but I was just pointing out that we had a completely different experience with the same product.

 

Ah. The slightly different review titles got me. I was sat there wondering whether they actually were reviewing another product.

Thank god for Strongbow being as distracting as it is, though.

Side note: Why does anyone trust Thermaltakes W/C products? I mean, sure, TT make cases that weigh as much as a small moon, but that hardly qualifies them as W/C experts..

 

To say it with the review:

 

Personally I LOVE the idea of a "all in one box" watercooled sli setup but it needs work. I surely would pay a tad bit more if I could buy a quality kit(danger den, swifttech, Innovatek, ect) all in one box WITH a complete warranty... A warranty is like car insurance to me.. You hope you never need it but if something happens and you DO need it you regret not getting it!