Corsair Nautilus 500 Water Cooling System Review!

[Dashken]

Have you always been interested in upgrading to a water cooler but have been put off by its complexity? Then you might be interested in the Corsair Nautilus 500 water cooling system!

It's easy to install and maintain, and it works great! Find out just how easy it is to install this water cooler!

Link : Corsair Nautilus 500 Water Cooling System Review!

[Olle P]

...we wonder why they decided to go with an aluminium radiator, as opposed to a full copper radiator.

No wonder: Cutting costs!
An aluminium radiator is cheaper than a copper rad.
The raw material is cheaper, as is processing and distribution!

With a copper rad the system would have to be more costly to buy and thus less appealing as an entry level system!

A few questions pops up:
1) How much fluid is there in the system, in total?
2) The delta T under load seems pretty low all over. Surely the stock cooler should get hotter than that! (To me it's normal to have a CPU temp >50C with room temperature ~20C. That's 30C delta T, not 10!)

Cheers
Olle

[PsYkHoTiK]

Originally Posted by Olle P

No wonder: Cutting costs!
An aluminium radiator is cheaper than a copper rad.
The raw material is cheaper, as is processing and distribution!

With a copper rad the system would have to be more costly to buy and thus less appealing as an entry level system!

A few questions pops up:
1) How much fluid is there in the system, in total?
2) The delta T under load seems pretty low all over. Surely the stock cooler should get hotter than that! (To me it's normal to have a CPU temp >50C with room temperature ~20C. That's 30C delta T, not 10!)

Cheers
Olle

I know that Aluminum is cheaper than Copper. But they did market it saying it will do a lot and it needs to have a bigger and more capable radiator.

To me it's abnormal to see a CPU temp of 50C with a 20C ambient temp (unless you use a presHot )... Cool & Quiet needs to be off for testing (and it doesn't have very much use for overclockers anyways.)

As for the amount of fluid, apart from that bottle of coolant, I topped up a little over a cup of distilled water.

[Olle P]

Originally Posted by PsYkHoTiK

... it needs to have a bigger and more capable radiator.

I'd say your test prove just the opposite!

Your test CPU use how much power at full speed (standard voltage and clocking)? 70W or more?
I assume 70W. Then 500W is 7.14 times more.
The delta T function isn't linear; the increase is reduced as the absolute temperature difference increase, so for an over-estimate of delta T @ 500W we take your measured 3.5 degrees delta T times 7.14 and end up at 25 degrees.
This means that you can pull 500W from the CPU at an ambient temperature of 30 degrees and still not get above a fully tolerable 55 degrees!

Cheers
Olle

[Max_87]

The delta T depends on where you take the temperature readings. In this review, the thermoprobe is placed at the base of the waterblock beside the heatspreader. This explains why the delta T is very low.

[PsYkHoTiK]

Originally Posted by Olle P

I'd say your test prove just the opposite!

Your test CPU use how much power at full speed (standard voltage and clocking)? 70W or more?
I assume 70W. Then 500W is 7.14 times more.
The delta T function isn't linear; the increase is reduced as the absolute temperature difference increase, so for an over-estimate of delta T @ 500W we take your measured 3.5 degrees delta T times 7.14 and end up at 25 degrees.
This means that you can pull 500W from the CPU at an ambient temperature of 30 degrees and still not get above a fully tolerable 55 degrees!

Cheers
Olle

Well you see, I never said it couldn't handle 500w. My point is if you're running WCing but get the performance levels of that below a high end air cooling solution, it defeats the purpose of going into watercooling right? And even if it was to be replaced with a single 120mm copper radiator (which I have already modded it to) I still wouldn't use this to cool my graphics card (let alone SLI.) My VF900 would prolly do a better job in this situation.

[Olle P]

Originally Posted by PsYkHoTiK

Well you see, I never said it couldn't handle 500w.

To me that's exactly what you implied! Manufacturers always specify the maximum power that can be handled with a tolerable (from a component performance point of view) temperature. With a more potent radiator they would just have increased the power rating.

Originally Posted by PsYkHoTiK

My point is if you're running WCing but get the performance levels of that below a high end air cooling solution, it defeats the purpose of going into watercooling right?

As I see it there are three reasons to use a watercooling system:
1) Prevent the component(s) from overheating. (Air cooling usually does this just as well. Actual performance irrelevant.)
2) The "cool" factor. Watercooling is , air cooling usually isn't! (Actual performance irrelevant.)
3) Be gentle to the system components. Watercooling is efficient for smoothing out rapid temperature changes in the components, which makes them perform better over time and live longer. Air cooling does generally not do this!

And on top of that: As your test show, this system does have better cooling performance than the high end air coolers!

Cheers
Olle

[Chai]

The 500W rating is pointless.

For example, at 100W heatload, it's about delta 10C.
When the heatload is 500W, it's about delta 50C.

As you can see, the cooling performance is linear. Technically, it can handle 500W of heat, but the CPU temp will increase another 50C, providing that the CPU can run stable at that temperature of course.