New Video card, new block?

[Dr.Beer]

Hello,

This is my first time posting, I am a semi-long time forum lurker, but now find myself needing to ask a question.

With the holiday seasons and a birthday, I've come upon some money to spend upon upgrading many things on my computer. After thinking about it and deciding, I've picked to upgrade the video card.

My current video card right now is a EVGA GTS 250.
It's being cooled with the Koolance GPU-200. this block has been doing it's job perfectly.

My current loop that I have is one that goes to the pump, to the radiator, to the CPU block and then to the video card block where it will fill into the reservoir and over again.

The radiator itself is being cooled by one fan pushing the air through it. This has been doing great so far and I've had no problems with cooling. Linky to Radiator.

Now to the juicy stuff. I've been thinking of either getting a GTX 460 or one of those new 6 series ATI. I am unsure which one yet. But my main question is do you think that water block would have trouble moving heat fast enough from the processor?
I my thoughts have been it shouldn't because the waterblock is still a tiny bit bigger than the specs on the GTX460's processor and should have enough surface area to cover the whole thing. I do not know if it has enough thickness in order to handle it. The 6 series is still something I need to look more into later this week, but it's something I would like some insight in if anyone has experience with that series.

Do you know of a 5 series that can do it and meets the same performance and price of a 460 and 6 series?
I can't really afford one of those fancy 100 dollar blocks as of right now and would rather not and be able to get away with my current blocks.

Any thoughts?

 

[Radeon28]

I actually use the same block on my old ATI-1950X. As far as the block goes, its a little dated, but with the right flow rates (which your pump can provide) it should be able to cool the GPU.

Other things to consider: that block will not cool the voltage regulators and GRAM on the new graphics card... what's your plan to keep them cool since the factory heatsink will need to be removed? You could leave the heatsinks on them and have a designated fan (I have used that method in the past), however with the new cards I'm not sure if that will be able to dissipate enough heat, since they draw a hell of a lot of power.

 

[Dr.Beer]

O yes I forgot to tell what my pump is. Linky to pump.

It is pretty overkill with the flow rates for my current loop which is very small. I don't think there would be a flow rate problem, I am even running the pump at 50% speeds and it seems the flow rates are still overkill. But that isn't a bad thing.

Here is a picture of my current card with it's set up.

Basically I would use copper heatsink plates for the ram and the voltage regs. I won't use those aluminum ones that are on the current GTS's voltage regulators, my plan was to spend about 10 dollars and buy some more pure copper ones for them.

From reading a little about the ASUS's 460, it doesn't draw too much power then idling, so my only concern will be when it's rendering video games.

 

[Radeon28]

I'd say your fine then for cooling the CPU and GPU in the same loop. Like I said, it's exactly what I'm doing, with almost the same components, and its working fine. Just make sure you have a good amount of airflow for the heatsinks on the gRam and vRegs, not just case airflow, but a fan mounted to blow fresh air on them.

 

[m0r7if3r]

Antec spot cools are great for that sorta thing.

 

[Dr.Beer]

Well I do like that spot cool, however I don't like the blue light, I might yank it out if I were to get one.

However the whole point of doing the water cooling was to avoid fans, I do have fans in the case to provide enough airflow, but I also have it balanced where it doesn't drive me nuts. As you can see from the picture the video card is cooled as is, it doesn't have a fan blowing on it and it has had no problems for the past 5+ months.

I guess what I am asking is someone with a GTX 460 or higher or a ATI series card and has it cooled not using a full coverage block. Does it require a fan?

I might get a PCI slot cooler like this one to help with the cooling if it's really needed.

If anyone has any suggestions or alternative ideas to help with planning, that would be great. Thanks