Hydro Series HG10. Will it be worth it?

[Breal]

 

[dizmo]

They work decently, for sure. If you have an AMD reference card they drop the temperatures pretty substantially.
I imagine most people here will say you should custom loop, but this appeals to me more.

[Coombzy]

It supposedly fixes the issues the Kraken G10 had with VRM temps so I think this will become the go to product unless NZXT update the Kraken to fix that issue.

[Aniallation]

If the case that a GPU is going in has decent airflow I'd still stick with air cooling

[Toddwjp]

It supposedly fixes the issues the Kraken G10 had with VRM temps so I think this will become the go to product unless NZXT update the Kraken to fix that issue.

 

the kraken g10 vram problems could be fixed with cheap vram heat sinks, also this only affect specific cards etc, but yes i would love an update the the kraken, also be cool if more oems sold gpus with a water cooling option

 

also will the HG10 work with a H60?

[Ate]

This, kraken g10 or accelero hybrid?

[Faceman]

The problem with the G10 can be solved with $10 worth of heat sinks and thermal tape.

The HG10, has a problem of its own. It is only compatible with reference cards. Not reference PCB, reference cards. If you have any kind of non-reference card, the HG10 will not work for your card. The HG10 incorporates the blower style fan from the reference card into its design, without it, it will not work.

There has been speculation that the HG10 has been delayed to try and improve the design to include a blower style fan so that it works with all types of cards.

Until then, the Kraken G10 is a compelling product that works on almost every card available from many past generations as well.

[riad]

Will this work with the EVGA Titan? It looks very promising. The only reason i haven't purchased a nzxt bracket is because of the backplate it comes with.

[Faceman]

Will this work with the EVGA Titan? It looks very promising. The only reason i haven't purchased a nzxt bracket is because of the backplate it comes with.

What is wrong with the G10's backplate?

[riad]

What is wrong with the G10's backplate?

Well, from what i see, you can't use a full backplate with the G10 and the G10's look horrible but that's just my opinion.

[Faceman]

Well, from what i see, you can't use a full backplate with the G10 and the G10's look horrible but that's just my opinion.

I use a full backplate with my EVGA GTX 780 SC w/ Previous ACX Cooler.  All you have to do is remove or cut down the foam of the G10's Backplate.  You can see the Finished Product here.  Forgive the wire mess, I was so happy to be finished that I started taking pictures before doing cable management. 

[riad]

I use a full backplate with my EVGA GTX 780 SC w/ Previous ACX Cooler.  All you have to do is remove or cut down the foam of the G10's Backplate.  You can see the Finished Product here.  Forgive the wire mess, I was so happy to be finished that I started taking pictures before doing cable management. 

Okay okay, fair enough, i'm using EVGA Titans, i've heard alot of talk about the cooling of the VRM's can be an issue with the G10, what would you recommend, also, my backplate has a cutout for the centerpiece for the foam block, do i need to just shave the edges to make it smaller?

[Faceman]

Okay okay, fair enough, i'm using EVGA Titans, i've heard alot of talk about the cooling of the VRM's can be an issue with the G10, what would you recommend, also, my backplate has a cutout for the centerpiece for the foam block, do i need to just shave the edges to make it smaller?

Exactly, you could either shave down the foam to fit inside that cutout(mine has the same thing)  Or you can thin the foam pad out which is what I did.  You can see the thinned out pad here, also take a look at the other pictures in my gallery and you can see the entire process. My Heat Sink application for the VRAM and VRMs are pictured there as well.

 

I am not sure if the EVGA Titans have a base-plate pre-installed on their cards, but if they are like the 780 SC's w/ ACX Cooling, they will have a base plate.  With the base plate, it is already passively cooling the VRAM and VRMs, so adding heatsinks isn't really needed.  I decided to add some just to be on the safe side.

 

The most common critical review of the G10 Modification is from Puget Systems where they show an infrared picture of the GTX Titan with stock cooler and with G10. It does show that the VRMs get hotter without the stock Titan heatsink, but you have to keep some things in mind:

#1 They are using Furmark/Kombustor, which is a dangerous program that puts unnecessary heat and load onto the GPU. This program should NEVER be used, I have bricked a brand new, GTX 770 Lightning at stock earlier this year just by running Kombustor. Stay away from Furmark/Kombustor! In real-world scenarios, namely gaming, you will never ever come remotely close to the amount of stress that is put onto your GPU like with Furmark/Kombustor. Unigine Heaven is a safe, and realistic benchmark/stress test that shows what you can really expect in terms of performance and heat. When you look at the infrared pictures of the Titan with stock cooler and G10, you see that the VRM temps remain about the same and arguably better with the G10.

#2 They are using a reference Titan for their tests, reference cards don't come with a baseplate to cool the VRM and VRAM, so immediately you can already expect improved temperatures with our EVGA non-reference cards(if you keep the baseplate).

#3 They did not use any heatsinks for their cards.

After taking all of those things into account, you should see that the G10 mod is perfectly safe, even without added heatsinks as long as you do not use Furmark/Kombustor. Many people have opted to skip the heat sinks because they knew they would never run Furmark/Kombustor and have never complained. I know that I will never run those programs, but I added them anyways just to be safe.

 

There is a wealth of information on the Overclocker's.com G10 Owners Club, the people there have been tremendously helpful to me, and I try to contribute whenever possible.  This is a fairly *new* mod, and it requires additional products and effort.

 

I kept my baseplate on and added heatsinks just to be careful though. Here are the components that I bought:

2 Packs of Cosmos VGA Copper Heatsinks

1 Pack of Cosmos VGA Aluminum Heatsinks

1 Pack of Seksui Double Sided Adhesive Thermal Tape

If you are keeping the baseplate on, which you should, you HAVE to buy a Copper Shim and use Thermal Paste on both sides. 20mm x 20mm x .8mm.

Optional: VGA to 4-pin PWM Fan Adapter This lets you plug in the 92mm Fan into the Video Card(controllable through MSI Afterburner) instead of onto a motherboard fan header.

Optional: Hopefully you already have some Thermal Paste, if not you will have to buy some. I recommend Gelid GC Extreme It is more expensive than other Thermal Pastes, but I like it and the temperatures are very good as a result. Dropped my CPU by 3C from the Cooler Master thermal paste that comes with their coolers. It also dropped my EVGA GTX 780 SC w/ ACX Cooler's temperatures by 4C from the stock thermal paste that was used. Before using this thermal paste, you need to put it in a plastic zip-loc bag and boil it. Otherwise it is very hard to work with.

This is a time consuming mod, and is kind of difficult to put together and mount by yourself, but it can be done. The most time consuming part, and this is mandatory if you choose to add heatsinks, is you have to remove the tape that comes pre-applied to the heat sinks. You have to first clean off all of the thermal tape on the heatsinks, then clean the bottoms with isopropyl alcohol. Then clean off the base plate or wherever you will be applying the heat sinks to with isopropyl alcohol. Let dry. Then you cut down the Seksui thermal tape for each individual heat sink. This way proper adhesion will occur and the heat sinks wont fall off, and heat transfer will be at its best.

To give you an idea of the performance of the G10 on the EVGA GTX 780 SC w/ ACX Cooler my temperatures went from low 70s with a fan curve to never hitting 50C when fans and pump are at 60% constant speed on my X31. I used the Kraken X31 as my AIO--I would personally not recommend this AIO unless you have a super large case and need all 16 inches of tubing. I have 2 fans on the X31 in Push/Pull as an exhaust in my Phanteks Enthoo Pro.

[riad]

Exactly, you could either shave down the foam to fit inside that cutout(mine has the same thing)  Or you can thin the foam pad out which is what I did.  You can see the thinned out pad here, also take a look at the other pictures in my gallery and you can see the entire process. My Heat Sink application for the VRAM and VRMs are pictured there as well.

 

I am not sure if the EVGA Titans have a base-plate pre-installed on their cards, but if they are like the 780 SC's w/ ACX Cooling, they will have a base plate.  With the base plate, it is already passively cooling the VRAM and VRMs, so adding heatsinks isn't really needed.  I decided to add some just to be on the safe side.

 

The most common critical review of the G10 Modification is from Puget Systems where they show an infrared picture of the GTX Titan with stock cooler and with G10. It does show that the VRMs get hotter without the stock Titan heatsink, but you have to keep some things in mind:

#1 They are using Furmark/Kombustor, which is a dangerous program that puts unnecessary heat and load onto the GPU. This program should NEVER be used, I have bricked a brand new, GTX 770 Lightning at stock earlier this year just by running Kombustor. Stay away from Furmark/Kombustor! In real-world scenarios, namely gaming, you will never ever come remotely close to the amount of stress that is put onto your GPU like with Furmark/Kombustor. Unigine Heaven is a safe, and realistic benchmark/stress test that shows what you can really expect in terms of performance and heat. When you look at the infrared pictures of the Titan with stock cooler and G10, you see that the VRM temps remain about the same and arguably better with the G10.

#2 They are using a reference Titan for their tests, reference cards don't come with a baseplate to cool the VRM and VRAM, so immediately you can already expect improved temperatures with our EVGA non-reference cards(if you keep the baseplate).

#3 They did not use any heatsinks for their cards.

After taking all of those things into account, you should see that the G10 mod is perfectly safe, even without added heatsinks as long as you do not use Furmark/Kombustor. Many people have opted to skip the heat sinks because they knew they would never run Furmark/Kombustor and have never complained. I know that I will never run those programs, but I added them anyways just to be safe.

 

There is a wealth of information on the Overclocker's.com G10 Owners Club, the people there have been tremendously helpful to me, and I try to contribute whenever possible.  This is a fairly *new* mod, and it requires additional products and effort.

 

I kept my baseplate on and added heatsinks just to be careful though. Here are the components that I bought:

2 Packs of Cosmos VGA Copper Heatsinks

1 Pack of Cosmos VGA Aluminum Heatsinks

1 Pack of Seksui Double Sided Adhesive Thermal Tape

If you are keeping the baseplate on, which you should, you HAVE to buy a Copper Shim and use Thermal Paste on both sides. 20mm x 20mm x .8mm.

Optional: VGA to 4-pin PWM Fan Adapter This lets you plug in the 92mm Fan into the Video Card(controllable through MSI Afterburner) instead of onto a motherboard fan header.

Optional: Hopefully you already have some Thermal Paste, if not you will have to buy some. I recommend Gelid GC Extreme It is more expensive than other Thermal Pastes, but I like it and the temperatures are very good as a result. Dropped my CPU by 3C from the Cooler Master thermal paste that comes with their coolers. It also dropped my EVGA GTX 780 SC w/ ACX Cooler's temperatures by 4C from the stock thermal paste that was used. Before using this thermal paste, you need to put it in a plastic zip-loc bag and boil it. Otherwise it is very hard to work with.

This is a time consuming mod, and is kind of difficult to put together and mount by yourself, but it can be done. The most time consuming part, and this is mandatory if you choose to add heatsinks, is you have to remove the tape that comes pre-applied to the heat sinks. You have to first clean off all of the thermal tape on the heatsinks, then clean the bottoms with isopropyl alcohol. Then clean off the base plate or wherever you will be applying the heat sinks to with isopropyl alcohol. Let dry. Then you cut down the Seksui thermal tape for each individual heat sink. This way proper adhesion will occur and the heat sinks wont fall off, and heat transfer will be at its best.

To give you an idea of the performance of the G10 on the EVGA GTX 780 SC w/ ACX Cooler my temperatures went from low 70s with a fan curve to never hitting 50C when fans and pump are at 60% constant speed on my X31. I used the Kraken X31 as my AIO--I would personally not recommend this AIO unless you have a super large case and need all 16 inches of tubing. I have 2 fans on the X31 in Push/Pull as an exhaust in my Phanteks Enthoo Pro.

Okay from what i understand, i see that the G10 isn't a bad product BUT, with the HG10 reusing the stock blower and and the overall aesthetics won't it be the same if not better? With the design of the HG10, wouldn't it cut out the need for additional VRM cooling etc? If you can let me know the obvious problems with it, i'll purchase 2 G10's and 2 X31's bright and early monday morning. Space wouldn't be a problem for me, i'm using a 900D and no i'm not going to just run a full loop, i'm not confident / experienced enough to dive into such things.

[Faceman]

Okay from what i understand, i see that the G10 isn't a bad product BUT, with the HG10 reusing the stock blower and and the overall aesthetics won't it be the same if not better? With the design of the HG10, wouldn't it cut out the need for additional VRM cooling etc? If you can let me know the obvious problems with it, i'll purchase 2 G10's and 2 X31's bright and early monday morning. Space wouldn't be a problem for me, i'm using a 900D and no i'm not going to just run a full loop, i'm not confident / experienced enough to dive into such things.

I was also holding out hope for the HG10, but I learned that it ONLY works on reference cards.  Not reference PCB, reference card.  If you have any kind of aftermarket card like MSi, Gigabye, EVGA it is not going to work with the HG10 because the HG10 requires the blower style fan from the reference design.  Also, it is hard to say if the HG10 will be better than the G10 because it hasn't been released yet.

 

Remember to buy those extra components if you want to get the best/safest performance out of your G10.  The VRAM and VRM heatsinks are necessary if you plan to overclock.  Some people have overclocked without the VRM and VRAM heatsinks, but I wouldn't leave that up to chance when you can buy the 20 pack aluminum heat sinks + thermal tape for $10 together and cover everything.

[riad]

I was also holding out hope for the HG10, but I learned that it ONLY works on reference cards.  Not reference PCB, reference card.  If you have any kind of aftermarket card like MSi, Gigabye, EVGA it is not going to work with the HG10 because the HG10 requires the blower style fan from the reference design.  Also, it is hard to say if the HG10 will be better than the G10 because it hasn't been released yet.

 

Remember to buy those extra components if you want to get the best/safest performance out of your G10.  The VRAM and VRM heatsinks are necessary if you plan to overclock.  Some people have overclocked without the VRM and VRAM heatsinks, but I wouldn't leave that up to chance when you can buy the 20 pack aluminum heat sinks + thermal tape for $10 together and cover everything.

 

I was also holding out hope for the HG10, but I learned that it ONLY works on reference cards.  Not reference PCB, reference card.  If you have any kind of aftermarket card like MSi, Gigabye, EVGA it is not going to work with the HG10 because the HG10 requires the blower style fan from the reference design.  Also, it is hard to say if the HG10 will be better than the G10 because it hasn't been released yet.

 

Remember to buy those extra components if you want to get the best/safest performance out of your G10.  The VRAM and VRM heatsinks are necessary if you plan to overclock.  Some people have overclocked without the VRM and VRAM heatsinks, but I wouldn't leave that up to chance when you can buy the 20 pack aluminum heat sinks + thermal tape for $10 together and cover everything.

Well i'm using an EVGA Titan, i'm hoping it works because i really like the design of the HG10,

[Faceman]

Well i'm using an EVGA Titan, i'm hoping it works because i really like the design of the HG10,

Can you link me the exact card please?  If I am picturing it like I think it is, then yes you have a blower card and it should work on the HG10.  It is an N1 Revision, yes?

[riad]

Can you link me the exact card please?  If I am picturing it like I think it is, then yes you have a blower card and it should work on the HG10.  It is an N1 Revision, yes?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130897  this is it here, i'm using 2 of these

[Faceman]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130897  this is it here, i'm using 2 of these

What a beast of a system...

 

Just by looking at it, it should work.  I want to confirm though.  Do you have GPU-Z?  Could you go into GPU-Z and look at the Revision Number please?  It is shown in the picture below in the red box.  Your Revision should read: N1

[riad]

What a beast of a system...

 

Just by looking at it, it should work.  I want to confirm though.  Do you have GPU-Z?  Could you go into GPU-Z and look at the Revision Number please?  It is shown in the picture below in the red box.  Your Revision should read: N1

Sure, the second screen is of my build. The reason i am soo concerned is because i have a 144hz Asus and the first titan idles @ 60c. I've done some research and it's apparantly some kinda requirement for a gpu to run above idle for 144hz, cause when i go down to 120hz it idles @ 35c

[Faceman]

Thats weird, I've never heard of that idle stuff...  Idle at 60C... damn.  My GPU doesn't even hit 50C!  I am mostly in the mid 40s when gaming and I idle at 25C with the G10 mod.

 

Hmmm I am not sure if the HG10 is going to work because you have revision A1

[Faceman]

I checked, it does say the Titan is compatible, but it says N1 Revision cards only...

[riad]

I checked, it does say the Titan is compatible, but it says N1 Revision cards only...

Hmm, well i guess i'll have to ask around and find out for sure, i'm not sure why mine says A1. You see, the whole reason i want to get the HG10 is because it's more simple to install. Forgive me for being cautious but i'm not confident when it comes to installing heat sinks etc especially when i paid a grand per gpu.

[Faceman]

Hmm, well i guess i'll have to ask around and find out for sure, i'm not sure why mine says A1. You see, the whole reason i want to get the HG10 is because it's more simple to install. Forgive me for being cautious but i'm not confident when it comes to installing heat sinks etc especially when i paid a grand per gpu.

I don't blame you man, I was the same with my $500 card.  The G10 is a pain to install, I needed the help of a friend because it was so difficult to mount by myself.  The HG10 does have a more sleek look, but it hasn't been released, we don't know how it will perform, and it may not even be compatible.  Have you taken apart your GPU lately to see if there is a mid/base plate on that card?

[riad]

I don't blame you man, I was the same with my $500 card.  The G10 is a pain to install, I needed the help of a friend because it was so difficult to mount by myself.  The HG10 does have a more sleek look, but it hasn't been released, we don't know how it will perform, and it may not even be compatible.  Have you taken apart your GPU lately to see if there is a mid/base plate on that card?

nah, i haven't i'm personally scared to, installing the backplate alone got me nervous lol.