Coolermaster Hydra 8800 and Glacier 600 GPU water cooling review
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 20 Apr 2008

With the increasing GPU complexity comes increased power consumption. For both ATI and NVIDIA, the situation culminated with the 8800Ultra and 2900XT graphics cards. After them came models whose GPUs where produced in a smaller production process. So it is no wonder that the 2900XT and the ‘old’ 8800 generation is the logical choice to use with watercooling. Today we are reviewing two watercooling units for those cards from Coolermaster, the Hydra 8800 and the Glacier 600.

First we are going to look at the hotter of the two cards, the 2900XT. That card has become infamous for its loudness under load, which can only be rivaled by the new 3870x2 which is basically two cards in one. The 80nm production process of the R600 uses a lot more power than the 55 nm process used the latest products. Coolermaster Glacier 600 is designed to solve this problem for the user. It is a big water block cooling not only the GPU like some other blocks, but the memory and PVM sections of the card as well. The underside of the cooler has a 45 degree rotated base for the GPU, and a lot of bases for the memory chips and PVM parts. The cooler itself Is made of aluminum and weighs 390 grams, which is les s than the copper heatsink of the stock cooler. It has two pipe connectors at the top, and mounting holes to keep the cooler evenly pressed against the cooled components. The pipes are connected to a pair of rotating connectors, which is extremely valuable when you are positioning the cooling system inside the case. Coolermaster supplies both 3/8’’ and ½’’ connectors, so you will be able to connect it to any cooling system you might already have. Mounting the cooler is identical to mounting the stock cooler, since it uses the same mounting holes. The only thing you will have to part from is the back panel for memory cooling, since it cannot fit onto the card because of the pipe connectors.

A couple of pictures: