Danger Den is a name that is well known in the water-cooling industry. They were one of the first pioneers in water-cooling systems and have built up quite a name for themselves. Danger Den stands for quality, and I have been using their products for about 3 years now.I have tried other brands, but I always came back to them. Why, you ask? Because of quality products.
You can say anything you like about Danger Den but you can’t deny the quality of their products, which offer innovation and affordable performance. After a long row of “Maze” products they changed the names and the design of the block, like the RBX and the TDX waterblock (that I’ll be reviewing later), however Danger Den did stick to one design for the GPU blocks, the Maze4 design, and since it already proved itself as a good CPU block, they are using the same design in the DangerDen Maze4 GPU block.
Since this block has its name because it’s made on the design of the Maze4 CPU, I took the liberty to check that out for myself and opened the GPU block, and guess what just like the name the inside is exactly the same design, so CPU cooling power for you VGA card.
On the left the Maze4 CPU, on the right the Maze4 GPU
This block is available in 3 colors, Red, Black, and Blue. I got the red one, however it looks more like purplish pink to me, of course that won’t affect the cooling properties.
A big anodized aluminum adapter is bolted to the base of the block. The anodizing process protects the aluminum coating in a hard layer so that the aluminum won’t affect the copper and vice-versa. This block is quite large, for a size comparison a Maglite 6D was added to the picture.
This block comes in a nice sturdy box, containing the block and all the mounting hardware needed to install this product.
The base of the blocked is lapped to a 1200 grit base, and is covered by a piece of tape to protect it against corrosion and fingerprints. When removed it does leave behind an oily residue but this can easily be removed with some alcohol or white spirit.
I will be installing this waterblock on my Sapphire ATI X800 Pro. This went as easy as I expected, as everything just slides into place where is should be. The block will fit on most VGA cards according to the Danger Den website.
“Compatibility ATI: Most Radeon Series blocks (9500, 9600, 9800, and X800 series) with the two hole mounted fans. Excludes the All-In-Wonders at this time, Compatibility Nvidia: As far as we can tell there is complete support for 4 series on up to 59XXFX (excluding most 6800FX). Holes are available for the 2 and 3 series and should work also.”
You’ll need to remove your stock heatsink, this is done by removing all screws, on my card there were 3 little screws. Some manufacturers use a sticky thermal paste, so if it’s stuck you can wiggle it around a bit to let it loosen up. It also helps to warm the heatsink up, that way you can easily remove it. Also don’t forget to unplug the fan connector from the card.
Next remove the remaining thermal paste with some white spirit or alcohol, and after that apply a new layer of thermal paste of your favorite brand. I’m using Arctic Silver 5.
First line up the holes of the Maze 4 up with your VGA card, and screw the threaded barbs in. On the backside of your card slip a plastic washer on both bolts, then a spring and the other 2 plastic washers. Finally tighten down the nuts, switching back and forth between them until they are about 60% loaded.
It is important to not over tighten the springs; you should give them some slack. Over tightening could lead to damage to your card or crushing the core. I leave you with now with some pictures of the block installed, on the next page its testing and benching time.
I will be testing this block on my Sapphire ATI X800 Pro. These are fast cards and with ever increasing speeds and power of today’s VGA graphics cards, the heat is also becoming an issue. However ATi can still cope with a rather small heatsink whereas Nvidia uses larger heatsinks to dissipate all that heat, but where does it all end? In a few years we might me sitting with earplugs behind our monitor because of ridiculous cooling trying to keep the card from overheating. When overclocking heat is an important issue, basically the colder the better. This is where Danger Den steps in. I did some rigorous testing with my card trying to get the max overclock possible with the stock heatsink and Danger Den Maze 4 GPU block.
Lets get down to business. I will be testing how well the block cools and the amount of overclocking I can gain over the stock cooling. I will be using ATITool v0.0.2.2 to overclock the card and wil be making use of the internal thermal diode as well as an external diode. For testing the temperature as well as the overclock ability, I’ll be using 2 programs: the ATITool for overclocking and stability, and 3DMark05 for stability testing and getting load temperatures.
So after a better day of testing I got the following results: I kept the room temperature at a constant 23 degree Celsius, the watercooling system was first kept on for the night to get a good idle temperature. All of the results are reported in degrees Celsius. First off I tested the stock cooling and Maze 4 block with the video cards default core and memory speeds. As you can see the Maze 4 GPU block does a much better job compared to the stock cooling, especially at full load.
I tried to obtain the highest possible overclock until the system locked up. ATITool constantly scans for artifacts when overclocking pushing up the core and memory in little steps; this also puts an enormous strain on the card, thus heating it up. As you can see there is quite a decrease with the load temperature while using the waterblock. Though it looks like only a few degrees the difference in those “few” degrees can seriously change your overclocking results.
So how far was I able to overclock it? I was able to overclock the core speed from it’s default 475MHz to a whopping 573MHz, that’s almost 100MHz! The memory was able to be overclocked from it’s default speed of 450MHz to 497MHz.
Conclusion
Yet again Danger Den delivered another great quality product, which really did the job that it is supposed to do, keeping things cool. Although I think the bolts are a bit on the long side a Dremel should take care of that. You won’t end up losing a PCI slot with this product if you leave the screws alone, however its gets pretty close. Other than that there’s nothing left for me to say except that I am giving this block a 9/10 and awarding it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Danger Den for sending me this block.
Pros
- Good value for the money
- Great cooling
- Easy to install
- Will increase your overclock
Cons
- Bolts are a little long