I have finally gotten the opportunity to review a Danger Den watercooling kit here at OCmodshop. I have used their products before and they were excellent so I do go into this review with a positive bias. The reason I love watercooling is because it offers superior cooling and most of the time is almost silent.
With watercooling you are almost always able to get a better overclock than with air and also have the option of adding peltiers which will again boost your overclock. There are many different watercooling companies out there now because of the demand, but some that are good and some that aren’t. In the past I have found Danger Den to be one of the best, lets see if that still holds true.
an 11¾ x 8¾ x 8¾ box showed up and as soon as I saw the Danger Den shipping label it was like Christmas. I opened up the box to find that everything was bubble wrapped for protection and in its own individual bag for organization. This is just one simple way in which Danger Den shows their professionalism and effort to provide quality products.
The Maze 4 waterblock comes in a bubble wrap package so that it is not damaged during shipping. Within the packaging is the block of course and the hardware to mount it to the motherboard. Included for the mounting are four screws, washers, nuts. With this mounting hardware you will need to remove your motherboard to get the block installed correctly. This procedure will keep the block in place better but is more of task to get installed.
The CPU waterblock that comes with this kit is the Maze 4 which is the successor to the Maze 3 which was a really good block. This Maze 4 is designed to be used on socket A systems but you can change the top to work with Socket 478 setups. The block itself is made of pure copper which is the best material that can be used for cooling and the top is made of Lucite which is laser cut.
The barbs on this block are chrome which look really cool especially compared to the standard brass or polypropylene ones. The flow design within the block looks pretty different compared to the Maze 3 and most other blocks. Instead of a single channel in a circle there is more of a flow over smaller cuts. From the profile view of this block you can see that it is pretty thin, the copper part of the block is actually thinner than the Lucite top. The base of the waterblock does not come with any plastic protection on it however the finish on it has no real scratches or blemishes.
A GPU waterblock was also sent with the kit which is used on video cards. The GPU waterblock comes in the same kind of packaging that the Maze 4 does with this block being a little smaller of course. There is also similar hardware included with the block as far as screws, nuts, and washers. The video card will have to be taken out for installation however that is much easier than a motherboard.
The Lucite top can be changed so that it will either fit on ATi or Nvidia video cards. When you order you will have to choose which you want, but it’s nice that you have the option. The top is attached to the block with four screws and sealed with an O-ring so there is no leakage.
The water will flow over almost the entire surface of the block which is good because there won’t be any dead spots. The barbs on this block are at a 45° angle so that they dont interfere with anything on your video card. I like that a 45° angle barb is used rather than a 90° one because the flow rate will not be hindered by the curve.
The pump that comes with this kit is somewhat unfamiliar to me, it’s a Hydor L20. This pump can push 185GPH (700 l/h) of water which means this pump has a higher flow rate than an Eheim 1048. This pump is very small with the dimensions of 3.5″x2″x3″ which is about half the size of the Eheim 1048. This is a huge benefit to those of you out there who have a small case and need a small pump. This pump will work both inline and while submerged so you can design your watercooling setup how you want to. This pump uses a ceramic shaft to power the blades which is good because it will conduct less heat than a metal one. With this pump being so small you would think it would have to take a lot of power to run it but it only needs 11w to operate.
Inside the box included with the pump is a manual and a bag with two fittings and four suction cup feet. The manual for the pump provides a good amount of information on how to sit it up and what it is capable of. The fittings that come inside the bag are pretty standard but I am curious to see if the blue compression fittings will fit over the tubing at all. We will see how this all works out later in the review.
As I said before the pump is very small, I put the tube of Arctic Silver Ceramique next to it and they are almost the same length. The pump comes with a 3 prong plug, some new Eheim pumps are able to be powered by a Molex from the power supply; this feature would have been nice to see on this pump as well. The back of the pump has a sticker with the specs of the unit and the model number. The cord is well sealed off from the inside of the pump so that if you decide to run it submerged it will not short.
The front of the Hydor pump has a blue control knob which allows you to adjust the flow rate of the water. This will not be used though because I will be setting up my system inline. Later I will show you how to setup the pump so that you can run your system inline as well. The top of the pump can easily be installed with the fitting provided and will not need any modification.
The pump comes with rubber suction feet that you can install to the bottom of the pump which is a great idea. One of the problems I had with the Eheim pumps is that they vibrate against your case unless you put some sort of dampening underneath them. With these suction cups there will probably not be any vibration noise, not to mention the fact that it will stay where you put it.
This kit includes a 4-pass Black Ice Pro radiator specifically developed for PC watercooling. This radiator has a lot of cool features such as: a built-in plenum chamber for increased performance and noise reduction, 1/2″ pre-angled inlet/outlet barbed hose connectors, and high-density copper fin configuration for enhanced heat dissipation. This radiator is designed to accomidate a 120mm fan which is the standard for watercooling. It comes in a plain brown box with the screws taped on that are inside of a baggie. It doesn’t really matter what kind of packaging this radiator has, it’s whats inside that counts.
As soon as I opened up the box I was impressed, the paint job on this heater core is astounding. Typically heater cores come straight out of a car so they dont have any paint or much care given to them. This heater core is obviously not out of a car but it uses the same heater core design. Both fittings are professionally welded, however there is not a very good barb on them. The only difference between the front and back of this radiator are the fittings on one side. There are fan mounting holes on both sides of the radiator so you can choose which side you want your fan on, or you can have two fans.
From the side of the heater core you can see that it is fairly thin which means that it will be able to fit places other radiators might not. My previous heater core that I owned years ago was about two times the thickness of this one so I am glad to see they are thinner now. From the top of the radiator you can get an idea of about how wide it is (you could have also seen this from the above pictures.)
The reservoir that I received with this kit is a 5.25″ Bay-Res which installs to a free 5.25″ drive bay in your case. This is a really cool idea which has been out for a short while now. This kind of concept would compliment a clear case nicely and improve the overall look. The reservoir comes packaged in a good amount of bubble wrap which is necessary because it is made of acrylic and could easily crack. Underneath the bubble wrap the reservoir is still protected with some of the adhesive paper that acrylic comes with to protect it. I like that this protection was left on due to the fact that acrylic scratches really easily, not to mention it would get fingerprint marks all over it. You can also see that the mounting hardware is taped to the top of the reservoir in a plastic baggie.
I took the protective paper off of the reservoir and examined the design and quality of it. The reservoir has two elbow barbs on the back of the unit which are used for intake and outtake of water. The reservoir is divided in the middle by a piece of acrylic which separates the in from the out so the flow of water is better, instead of just filling in and flushing out. Overall the reservoir looks pretty good, but we will see how well it works during installation and testing.
Tubing is of course needed to connect all of the parts together for the water to run though. Danger Den provided ten feet of 1/2″ OD 3/8″ ID clear flex tubing for use with this system. Before when I had setup my own watercooling system I used silicon tubing which was quite expensive in comparison but this tubing seems like it will do an equal job. The tubing does not kink very easily which is something to look for if your will bending the tubing a lot in your setup and don’t want to use elbows. The tubing is actually branded by Danger Den which is a nice touch for them to add I think.
A 4oz bottle of water wetter super coolant is provided which is designed to do a few things. Water wetter has been known to lower the temperature of your CPU up to a few degrees because it changes the chemical makeup of the water making it better to dissipate heat. it also provides rust and corrosion protection so that your water stays clean and doesn’t need to be changed often. It will work with the blocks, tubing, radiator, and water in your system to keep it all clean. It comes in a baggie so nothing gets wet just incase it opens during shipping.
Arctic Silver just came out with their newest thermal compound, Arctic Silver Ceramique which is supposed to be really good. I have used this product recently however I have not tested it against other thermal compounds. Knowing that Arctic Silver makes great products I assume that this Ceramique is no different. The Ceramique is no longer silver based so it almost looks like the generic thermal compound that comes with most heatsinks. This compound is made of micronized aluminum oxide, boron nitride and zinc oxide. One of the big benefits to this compound compared to the older silver based compounds is that it is much easier to clean up and will not conduct electricity at all.
Also provided with this kit are 12 hose clamps which can be used to ensure no leakage within your system. These clamps are applied to the point of connection on the waterblocks, radiator, reservoir, pump, and whatever else you want to put them on. I really like that these clamps are provided because without them the chances of leakage and damage to your components is much higher.
Danger Den decided to send over an Evercool 120mm aluminum frame case fans which will be used on the radiator. There are probably two reasons for the housing to be aluminum; one because it looks cool and two because aluminum will dissipate heat. This fan is able to push 79.14 CFM of air at 2000 RPM and puts out 30Db of noise. To have a truly silent system the fan would need to be a little quieter but a fan is an easy thing to change or slow down. I would actually suggest hooking up some sort of fan control device to change the speed of the fan depending on what you are doing with your computer.
From the front of the fan you can see that this fan is model number EC12025M12CA, the M in the middle denotes its the medium powered one in this line of fans. The housing on this fan is made of pure aluminum and its a heavy fan, especially compared to a regular plastic one. The fan blade is made of plastic however and is only painted silver to match the housing and look better. The fan using a 3-pin motherboard header to power it but comes with a 3-4 pin connector, also included are four fan screws.
The first thing I want to say about the installation process is that no instructions provided. Because I have setup a DIY watercooling system before I knew what to do because I had done the trial and error before. With a kit of this stature I would assume that some instructions would be provided for those who have never used watercooling before. Even though I had installed a watercooling setup in the past it would have been nice to have some directions instead of having to spend time figuring out how the pump and block were to be installed. I hope that Danger Den addresses this issue in the future for their customers.
The pump needs some work done to it before it can be installed for inline usage. First screw the fitting in to the top of the pump. After you have done that you need to pull off the black plastic piece from the front of the unit and remove the control knob. Inside of the this part of the pump there is a filter, and blue piece of plastic which holds the centrifuge in place. You will not need the filter unless you are submerging the pump so you can put that aside, you also don’t need the black plastic cover. The only other thing you need to do is screw the plastic fitting provided with the pump into the hole. As a side note it did take me about five minutes to figure out how to correctly get this pump setup.
Again there are no instructions for installation of the waterblock so I just basically figured it out. The first thing you need to do is take a screw and put one nut and one washer on it. After you have the washer and nut on the screw slide it through the bottom of the hole on your motherboard. Be sure that the screw is not sticking out of the nut otherwise it may stick out too far and you will be unable to install your motherboard. Once you have the screw with the washer and nut in the hole take another washer and drop it onto the screw so it’s on the motherboard then take another nut and tighten it down onto the washer so that the screw is vertically straight and not moving. Once you have the first one done do the same thing to the other three holes on the motherboard so that all four are tight and standing up straight.
When you are doing this step be sure that the plastic washers are touching the motherboard on both sides and that the nuts are on top of the washers. If you have the nut on the motherboard you will probably short something out or damage something. When you are tightening the nuts down you will want to use some kind of wrench or pliers but be careful when you are tightening the them to the motherboard, be sure to not over tighten, doing so may damage it.
Now that you had all four screws securely attached to the motherboard you can install your CPU to the socket and apply the thermal compound of your choice to the core. Once you have the CPU installed take the Maze 4 and slide it down the four screws so that it is touching the core evenly. The best way to do this is to put it all the way down, take it off, and make sure the block has a thermal compound imprint of the core. If it does, reinstall the waterblock.
Be sure when you are installing the waterblock that the side of the block with the cutout is on top of the socket. If it is not you will get poor contact to the core of the CPU and can damage or destroy it.
Once you have the waterblock correctly on the CPU you will need to drop a spring onto each screw. Once you have a spring on each, slightly screw one of the brass nuts onto the screw, but not all the way. Screwing down the brass nuts will apply pressure to the springs which will evenly distribute pressure over the block and keep it tight to your CPU. When tightening the brass screws down on the springs you will want to use an “X” pattern. This means screw one down a little, then screw the one diagonally across from it down a little. From there move to the one next to it and then diagonally across from that one. Doing this will ensure that the block is evenly seated and your CPU will have less of a chance of being damaged. Once you have all four brass nuts tightened all the way down by hand your done.
To install the GPU waterblock you will need to take your video card out of your case. Once you have done that remove the stock heatsink from your video card, it will either be pinned on or epoxied one. If it is pinned on take a pair of pliers and squeeze the plastic pins on the back of your card so you can pull them out. If yours is epoxied on you can seal it in a plastic baggie and put it in the freezer for about an hour. Doing this will make the epoxy crystallize which will allow you easily remove the heatsink with a screwdriver. If you choose to use a screwdriver to take off your epoxied heatsink put something under the screwdriver so it doesn’t damage your video card. Now that you have the heatsink off, clean the thermal compound off the core that is there. Now reapply a thin new layer of the thermal compound included so that everything is fresh.
Be very careful if you are using this metod to remove a epoxied heatsink from your video card. I take no responsability if your card is damaged in this process
Now that you have the new thermal compound applied the mounting procedure will be about the same as the CPU waterblock. Put one of the washers onto the screw and then a nut so that it will be raised away from the card. I like that the washer isn’t directly on the card as much as a normal washer would be because there are usually small components on the back of the card. When you have the washers and nuts on both screws slide them through the bottom holes. When you have the screws through the video card put a flat washer on each screw then tighten another nut on top of each one. Your video card should look similar to the pictures below once you are done with this step.
Be sure when you tighten the nuts down onto the washers that nothing is under them that could be damaged. Also be sure not to over tighten the nuts, doing so could damage your video card.
Now that you have the screws mounted to the video card, take your waterblock and slide it down the screws onto the core of the video card. Place a spring on each spring so that it is sitting on the block then screw on the brass nuts as you did with the CPU waterblock. Be very careful when screwing down the brass nuts and do not over tighten. Pay attention to your card as you do this, if you screw them down too tight your video card will bend. You are now done installing your GPU waterblock to your video card.
Now that you have your pump setup, the waterblocks installed, your fan installed to the heater core, you can now start installing everything to your case. Installing a watercooling setup can be both enjoyable and a huge frustration. The main thing to remember while installing any watercooling kit is to be patient and be sure you are doing everything correctly and well. If you rush and try to just throw it together you could end up having a leak and destroying your hardware. The size and style of your case will determine where and how you will install all of the parts, assuming that they will all fit. A common problem with many cases today is that they are too small to accommodate a complete watercooling setup. Below is an illustration of how the flow of water should go to achieve the best performance. You can of course set it up however you want. Testing different ways of hooking it up will give you different results usually but in my past experience this has been the best.
pump -> CPU waterblock -> GPU waterblock -> reservoir -> radiator -> pump
The pictures below are after the watercooling kit has the tubing, clamps, and water installed. When installing the tubing be sure to measure out how much will be needed for each section so it’s not too long or short because you only have a certain amount of tubing. Also be sure to use hose clamps because they are helpful in cutting down on leakage. To fill the system with water the best thing to do is to get a funnel and fill the reservoir until it is full. Once the reservoir is full turn on the pump so it pulls the water out and into the circuit. As the pump is going continue to fill the system until it cant take any more water.
Be sure to use distilled water in your system because if you use plain tap water your system will degrade faster. Tap water has minerals and junk in it that you dont want running through your system. Also it is a good idea to use water wetter or some other water additive to keep the water from growing things.
The pump was simply put inside of the case near the back so that the fittings would point at the waterblock and radiator. The water will flow out of the top fitting which will then go directly to the CPU. Going from the radiator to the waterblock would theoretically give better performance because the pump will heat the water a little however not enough to see any difference. The pump does not come with a relay which means that you will have to plug the card into a wall outlet. You will also have to cut a hole in your case to route the plug out to plug it in to anything. If your power supply has an outlet in it you will be able to plug the pump into it and it will automatically start when your computer is turned on. If your power supply does not have an outlet you will have to keep the pump running all the time or plug it in every time you start your computer.
I chose to install the fan to the front of my radiator with the four screws provided. Once I had them tightened down enough I placed the radiator at the front of the case with the fan blowing through it and out of the case. Ideally what you will want to do is cut a 120mm hole for the fan and have air from the outside being pulled in and blown directly through the radiator. Doing this will cool the radiator better than using the hotter air inside of your case. For the testing of this kit I did not cut a hole, I just kept the side of my case off. After I installed the radiator I plugged in the fan to a regular Molex connector.
Using a Koolcase Panther which I previously reviewed I installed the Bay-Res to the top most 5.25″ drive bay. This case uses drive rails to hold the 5.25″ drives in place, normally they are great and save a lot of time. For some reason when I installed the Bay-Res to this case it did not align properly with the front bezel. I’m assuming that it did not install correctly because of my drive rails however I dont see why it shouldn’t work if the holes on the side of the Bay-Res are the same as a CDROM.
I installed my video card back into the case so that I could hook up all the tubing. I have the card setup so that the water flows from the CPU waterblock to the top fitting and out the side fitting which then goes to the reservoir. I like that the barbs are angled because it decreases the possibility of the tubing kinking.
Now that I have each part of the watercooling kit installed to my system, the tubing all hooked up and clamped, and filled with water it’s time to test it out and see if all the effort put into installing this kit will produce good results.
Test Bed
- Abit NF7-S Rev 2.0 (review to come)
- 1800+ Thoroughbred
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- 80GB Western Digital HDD
- 1024MB PC3200 Corsair TwinX (review to come)
- Abit Siluro Geforce 4 Ti4200-8X OTES
- Koolcase’s Panther
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
- Plextor PX-504A DVD+RW (review to come)
- True Silent 450w PSU
After getting everything installed I booted my computer and went into the BIOS. I recorded the idle temperature, restarted, and booted into Windows 2000. After Windows was done booting, I loaded up Prime 95 to get the load temperatures. I used my Thermalright SLK-800 to test against the watercooling kit with a Y.S. Tech 27.9 CFM fan on it because I like to have a quiet system. The watercooling did a very impressive job keeping my CPU cool, while idling the temperature was only 34° Celsius and at load it was only 36° Celsius. The heatsink was much less impressive with the fan that it had on it, the idle temperature was 43° Celsius while the load temperature was 46° Celsius. As you can clearly see this watercooling kit does a really good job.
Watercooling is not just designed to be quiet; it is also designed to be able to take a lot of heat which means you can increase your Vcore a lot. After getting the stock CPU speed temperatures I restarted my computer, went into the BIOS again and started overclocking.
With this watercooling kit I was able to easily overclock the CPU to 7.5×215 which is 1616MHz. I know I dont have a very fast CPU at the moment but it will have to do. Because I had this watercooling setup installed to my system I was also able to raise the Vcore to 1.75v which would have been more difficult to do with just air cooling, I also could have gone higher however I had no need for this overclock.
The same method was used to get the idle and load temperatures as with the stock speed. With all this said the idle temperature of the CPU was 36° Celsius and the load temperature was 40° Celsius. I did not attempt to get the results with my Thermalright SLK-800 because the fan I have on it is made to be quiet not an overclocker.
I also tested the GPU waterblock and compared it against the stock cooling on my Abit Siluro Geforce 4 Ti4200-8X OTES. To get the temperature from the core of the CPU I placed a thermal probe on the backside of the card and taped it into place.
I let the computer sit for about 15 minutes and recorded the idle temperature which was 41° Celsius. I then loaded up 3DMark2001SE and ran it for a while, after watching the temperature fluctuate it finally rounded off at around 47° Celsius. As you can see the waterblock does not perform as well as the OTES does.
My thought on why the waterblock did not do as well as the stock cooling is that it is getting the hot water from the CPU which means the GPU is not being cooled as well as it could be. It would be best if a smaller radiator, such as the Black Ice Micro was placed in-between the CPU and GPU block so that the water would be cooled down before it hit the GPU block.
Conclusion
This is my second experience with Danger Den watercooling kits and I am as impressed as I was before. Being very familiar with watercooling I would say that this kit ranks very high up among the other compactors on the market.
This is the first time I have ever used a Hydor pump and to be honest I did not like it as much as the Eheim I had previously used. This of course is my own personal preference and you may or may not disagree with me. I also was not very fond of the reservoir included. It did not line up with my 5.25″ bay and was a little hard to work with.
If I were configuring a kit I would have bought a regular one. There was also no documentation included with the kit which I hope Danger Den addresses in the near future.
This particular kit did not come with a relay for the pump either but Danger Den does sell them so you can include one with your kit which I would recommend.
The radiator, waterblocks, tubing, fan, clamps, water wetter, and thermal compound, were excellent and would recommend them to anyone looking for the best parts for a superior water cooling setup. Though this kit does have its pros and cons overall I am still very satisfied with Danger Den and their products.
Even though there are some negative aspects to this kit the positive ones override them. I am going to give this kit a 9/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would really like to thank Dan from Danger Den for sending me this kit to review.
Pros
- Performs really well
- Everything is very quiet
- Easy to install
- Maze 4 is compatible with AMD or Intel (with different tops)
- Pump is small and has suction cup feet
- Radiator looks and performs really well
- Tubing does not easily kink
- Water Wetter included
- 12 hose clamps included
- Arctic Silver Ceramique included
- Everything came packaged very well
Cons
- Bay-Res did not fit correctly
- No instructions included
- No pump relay included