NZXT releases the Kraken $30 for 45C GPU Temp drops?

[RainMotorsports]

The catch? The Kraken is only the less expensive half of the solution. Its a bracket that attaches an all in one water cooler to your GPU. Check out a review of it - http://techgage.com/article/nzxt-kraken-g10-gpu-bracket-review/1/

It works with the following coolers:

NZXT : Kraken X60, Kraken X40
Corsair : H110, H90, H75, H55 , H50
Antec : KUHLER H2O 920V4, KUHLER H2O 620V4, KUHLER H2O 920, KUHLER H2O 620
Thermaltake : Water 3.0 Extreme, Water 3.0 Pro, Water 3.0 Performer, Water 2.0 Extreme, Water 2.0 Pro, Water 2.0 Performer
Zalman : LQ-320, LQ-315, LQ-310

GPUs:

Nvidia : GTX 780 Ti, 780, 770, 760, Titan, 680, 670, 660Ti, 660, 580, 570, 560Ti, 560, 560SE
AMD : R9 290X, 290, 280X*, 280*, 270X, 270 HD7970*, 7950*, 7870, 7850, 6970, 6950, 6870, 6850, 6790, 6770, 5870, 5850, 5830

The bracket looks nice:

Until you realize how it actually works:

But as usual it never ceases to amaze me how much of a diffierence even prepackaged liquid cooling makes on a GPU compared to a CPU. In Kombustor the guy got 81C on stock and 35C with NZXT's Bracket and Cooler.

I am semi worried about the memory not being covered, its cool to air cool the memory but in all the install photos no heatsinks or anything. Has that shit gotten cooler or what?

 

[DeadlyX]

Wow. Thats very tempting.

Would like to see what happens with an SLI setup. I would have to somehow fit 3 140mm Radiators inside a Coolermaster Cosmos.

 

[RainMotorsports]

The thing about it is if your going to cool 2 GPU's and a cpu its not much more to do a proper custom system.

I have seen some crazy shit done with these though. Do 2 pumps from like an H55 on the GPU's and a proper water block on the cpu with a decent 2x120 rad. But its dumb shit. If you have a couple spair AIO's laying around sure why not. Id never do it otherwise.

Personally I have no real interest in water cooling the CPU but the graphics card is a way different story and something like this puts a warrantied water cooler instead of having to build a system... cost benifit is decent can do the whole thing for 100 bucks.

 

[Orga Smic]

I had someone mention this to me in a different forum. Something I was interested in also. The thing I read in another review was that the memory was air cooled, with the GPU being water-cooled this would keep some of the high temps from the GPU from heating up the memory, thus they say that the memory does not need to be cooled as much as usual. So basically they are saying that the memory temps are increased because of the GPU temp, so by decreasing the GPU temp you have decreased the memory temp and a fan will work just fine. I personally dont know this for a fact, but it makes sense. I am not an expert.

 

[RainMotorsports]

I had someone mention this to me in a different forum. Something I was interested in also. The thing I read in another review was that the memory was air cooled, with the GPU being water-cooled this would keep some of the high temps from the GPU from heating up the memory, thus they say that the memory does not need to be cooled as much as usual. So basically they are saying that the memory temps are increased because of the GPU temp, so by decreasing the GPU temp you have decreased the memory temp and a fan will work just fine. I personally dont know this for a fact, but it makes sense. I am not an expert.

Alot of water cooling solutions for GPU's don't directly cool the memory. It allows the water block itself to be more universal. Typically you will see people grab some cheap or even purpose made heatsinks for the ram. Some kits have a separate air cooled peice of a aluminum that attaches to the card before the more universal block. This lets them balance the compatibility of the kits while keeping the development cost low having still only 1 waterblock.

 

[Orga Smic]

So then the fan in the kit would be sufficient? Some people I have read were worried this would not work because what good would it be to Water-cool the GPU if the memory was overheating.

 

[RainMotorsports]

So then the fan in the kit would be sufficient? Some people I have read were worried this would not work because what good would it be to Water-cool the GPU if the memory was overheating.

I am just worried about the fact that I see photos without any heatsinks.

But here is how some do it if just using a universal block with no other parts:

The better kits that include passive cooling plates are like this:

The ram doesn't get THAT hot that it needs epic cooling. But seeing as how every stock GPU I have pulled a cooler off had memory cooling I would think it to be something slightly important. If your overclocking the shit out of the ram thats a different story.