by Sergey Lepilov
10/19/2008 | 10:24 PM
We have already tested Swiftech H20-220 Compact liquid-cooling system in the end of March 2008. This relatively inexpensive solution made a very good impression at that time having left a well-known super-cooler far behind in our tests. Today we are going to talk about an even more advanced and as a result more expensive liquid-cooling solution from the same manufacturer - H20-220 Apex Ultra+.
The box with Swiftech liquid-cooling system for all major computer components is not very big and its exterior slip-cover is designed in light-blue colors.
There is no important info on it: just the name of the manufacturer, and a bunch of award logos from on-line and printed publications that Swiftech products have earned by now.
Beneath this thin decorative slip-cover is another box of thick cardboard that protects all the system components against accidental damage. When you open this box, you get truly surprised with how everything actually fit in there:
Besides the main components of this liquid-cooling system, you will also get a lot of various accessories, adapters, small sets, screws, pads, different retention kits, and on and on…
I will not list all of them here, just take a look yourselves:
I would like to specifically mention 3m of flexible tubing with 11mm internal diameter and 3mm thick walls:
It also comes with a spiral coil called SmartCoils that should prevent the tubing from bending and ensure the liquid flow will not get blocked this way:
There is no actual manual in the box, however, there is a printout taken from the official web-site that will do just fine as a manual:
There is also a separate sheet warning you against possible radiator damage in case you use wrong (too long) fan retention screws.
Now let’s take a closer look at the main components of Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ liquid-cooling system.
The biggest component of this system is the radiator with preinstalled fans. Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ uses MCR220-QP copper radiator:
Without the fans the radiator measures 284.5 x 128 x 34 mm and holds 500ml of fluid.
It comes with two 120-mm fans already preinstalled. One of the fans has a mounted plastic retention frame for attaching the entire block to the system case rear panel:
The radiator has small-cell corrugated internal structure:
There are two fittings with 10mm internal diameter already attached to its lower side:
It is topped with two Chinese fans without any specific design peculiarities:
According to the marking on the rotor, these are RDM1225S fans using a slide bearing. Each fan should consume maximum 2.76W of power:
They rotate at 2000RPM maximum speed and generate 36dBA of noise creating 162.6CFM joint airflow. However, Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ comes bundled with two adapters: a 7V one and a 5V one. In the latter case the fan rotation speed drops to ~900RPM at 21dBA noise level. In this case the fans are really quiet. By the way, you can install fans onto both sides of the radiator if you remove the protective wire grills first.
Pump if the second major component of the Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ liquid-cooling system. It is a powerful Swiftech MCP655-B (Laing D5) pump:
In fact, it is the best pump Swiftech currently offers. It is powered by a regular 12V molex-connector and consumes maximum 24W.
The internal diameter of the incoming and outgoing tubing measures 10mm. Overall, it is pretty compact (90 x 90 x 88 mm):
The sticker on the pump rotor is not very informative:
However, the official web-site states that its maximum performance is 1200 l/h with 3.1m maximum head. In fact, it is by far the best pump we have ever tested. I would also like to add that its claimed MTBF is 50,000 hours which is equivalent to 5 years of non-stop service. The liquid temperature, however, has to stay within 0-60°C range.
Let’s continue checking out the Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ components. Next we are going to talk about the water blocks that come packed into a separate small box:
Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ comes with three water blocks: Swiftech Apogee GT CPU water block, Swiftech MCW60 GPU water block and Swiftech MCW30 mainboard chipset water block.
You may already be familiar with the CPU water block from our previous articles:
It turned out to be one of the best water blocks in the market. The internal structure of the copper base contains a lot of diamond-shaped pins:
This water block is compatible with all contemporary platforms and by default comes assembled for LGA775 mainboards:
There are 18 holes in the top retention plate that allow installing this water block on any of the existing sockets:
Its base is ideally even, however the finish is matt, not mirror-shining:
The thermal compound imprint test showed that the thinnest layer is ideally even without any gaps or lumps:
The next water block we are going to talk about is the universal graphics processor unit – Swiftech MCW60:
This model is not that new anymore. Its base is made of purified copper and there is a plastic cover with a steel retention plate. According to the description on the manufacturer’s web-site, its internal structure is very similar to that of Swiftech Apogee GT, but the base is finished much better: its surface has been polished off to shine like a mirror:
It is also ideally even, according to the thermal compound imprint check:
The water block is compatible with all contemporary ( and not very contemporary) graphics cards, because the distance between the two opposite retention spindles is 75mm , which is the same as the distance between the retention holes around GPUs of most contemporary graphics cards.
The water block comes with eight solid copper MC14 heatsinks for the graphics memory chips:
I have to say that it is a pretty valuable and expensive thing. By the way, you can buy these heatsinks separately for the “small” price of $16.99.
The third and smallest water block in the bundle is Swiftech MCW30 water block for the mainboard chipset:
As you can see from the photo, this tiny water block weighing only 60g doesn’t have the same diamond-shaped internal structure as Apogee GT or MCW60. However, the evenness and finish quality of its base are just as good:
The schematics below will help install the water block onto the mainboard properly:
In conclusion to our discussion of water blocks design and functionality I have to mention that they come with very efficient Arctic Silver Ceramique thermal compound.
The last component of Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ liquid-cooling system is the MCRes-Micro tank that measures 103 x 38 x 101 mm and holds only 133ml of fluid:
This tank is of very high quality, just like all the other system components. It features two threaded holes for the fittings and one more at the top for filling it with cooling liquid:
It is bundled with two types of retentions so that you could install it in any part of your system case at your convenience.
Now let’s discuss the assembly and installation peculiarities for Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ system.
Installation of any liquid-cooling system starts with water blocks mounting onto major system components. We decided to follow this traditional rule and consulted the manual before installing Apogee GT processor water block:
It turned out I didn’t really need to consult a manual, because the installation onto my LGA775 platform was extremely simple. All I had to do is screw it on to the backplate and insert the fittings into the corresponding holes:
However, I could have attached the fittings even before installing the water block onto the CPU.
Installing Swiftech MCW60 water block onto Radeon HD 4850 also turned out as easy:
The installation of the chipset water block should also be completely problem-free, however, I didn’t check it out, because in this case I would have had to take off the bulky chipset cooler from the ASUS P5K Deluxe mainboard. Besides, I didn’t want to leave the processor voltage regulator components without cooling, too.
Of course, you should find a place for the radiator, pump and tank. And if the latter two components of Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ liquid-cooling system are small enough to be put inside the system case, the radiator and fans will not fit into a standard ATX case. Therefore, Swiftech designed special retention that will allow attaching the radiator block to the outside of the case rare panel, just like they did with Swiftech H20-220 Compact. However, we encountered a problem with Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+, which we didn’t have with the Compact system: the tubes were too thick to fit into the opening from the removed rear panel bracket. There should be special 18-mm holes in the back of the case for tubing like that. And since my ASUS ASCOT 6AR2-B didn’t have any holes like that I decided to place the radiator block on top of the mainboard box next to the system case:
I used sticky tape to attach the tank to the desk panel and set the pump onto the railings from the removed HDD chassis (it was a perfect fit):
By the way, if you want to attach the pump to the bottom of your system case you have to use shock absorbing padding that will not only reduce vibrations but will also change the acoustics to something more acceptable for human ear (I didn’t use any).
The system should be filled with a mixture of HydrX coolant and 0.5 l of distilled water. It will be a lot easier to do if you use the enclosed small funnel. Assembled and filled Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ liquid-cooling system looks as follows:
I have to admit that this whole thing the way I put it together doesn’t look too nice for long-term use. However, it will do alright for testing purposes.
Another thing I really like about liquid-cooling systems compared against air coolers is the compact size of the water blocks they use:
No bulky heatsinks, any spot in the area around the socket is clearly visible and easily reachable. It may be an insignificant advantage, but still an advantage for the liquid-cooling system.
The technical specifications of the Swiftech liquid-cooling system we have just discussed are summed up in the table below:
The table doesn’t include different small accessories bundled with Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+.
Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ was tested inside a system case with the side panel removed. Our testbed was configured as follows during this test session:
All tests were performed under Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 SP1. SpeedFan 4.34 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU and mainboard, reading it directly from the CPU core sensor and to monitor the rotation speed of the cooler fans:
The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management feature was disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS as well as the processor power-saving technologies. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with the RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.35.0:
The CPU was heated up with OCCT (OverClock Checking Tool) version 2.0.0a in a 30-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remained idle in the first 1 and last 4 minutes of the test:
In response to numerous readers’ requests, we have also created additional load with IntelBurnTest v1.6 (by AgentGOD) that uses Linpack 32-bit stress-test algorithm. It turned out that we needed only 10 runs of Linpack program (load mode – 2) to have the CPU reach its maximum temperature with the liquid-cooling system. Air coolers required even fewer runs than that. Nevertheless, we increased the number of runs up to 15:
The full screenshot from Linpack test looks as follows:
I performed at least two cycles of tests for each test application and waited for approximately 20 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. The stabilization period in an open testbed took about half the time. Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second test cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core of the four in the two test cycles was considered the final result (if the difference was no bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed at least once again).
During the graphics card thermal test we used the Firefly Forest benchmark from the synthetic 3DMark 2006 graphics suite. We ran this benchmark 10 times in 1920x1200 resolution with enabled 4x full-screen antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. The GPU temperature and frequencies were monitored using RivaTuner v2.10 (by Unwinder).
The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperature was pretty low: 19~19.5°C. It is used as a starting point on the temperature diagrams. Note that the fan rotation speeds as shown in the diagrams are the average readings reported by SpeedFan, and not the official claimed fan specifications.
We will be comparing Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ against two extreme air-coolers. For the CPU we used Thermalright IFX-14 with two Thermaltake TurboFan fans (140 x 140 x 25mm, ~1000RPM rotation speed). And for the graphics card we used Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 with a Turbo-Module. The side panel of the system case was removed during the entire test session:
The total cost of these two cooling systems was around $130. As I have already said before, we didn’t install the water block onto the mainboard chipset, so in both cases a reference heatsink was involved.
We started our cooling efficiency tests of Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ liquid-cooling system with maximum CPU overclocking using OCCT utility. It turned out that this system with the fans working in quiet mode (~900RPM) keeps the CPU stable at up to 4.05GHz speed with the Vcore set to 1.6V in the mainboard BIOS (1.56~1.58V according to monitoring data). The most remarkable thing is that the temperatures of the hottest processor die didn’t exceed 58°C:
The result is more than impressive. And at maximum fan rotation speed of ~2000RPM the temperature got another 2°C lower and never exceeded 56°C. But what will the results be if we use Linpack instead of the OCCT to load the processor? In this case we had to lower the CPU frequency to 3.95GHz at the same voltage setting. After 15 test cycles the temperature under maximum workload reached 72°C in quiet mode and 70°C with the fans of Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ working at their full speed. I have to add that these results were obtained with a graphics card water block installed and working.
Now I have to say a few words about maximum processor overclocking using the highly efficient air cooler that is trying to compete against a liquid-cooling solution today. We reached 4.04GHz with 1.6V Vcore and 67°C peak temperature, which is 9°C lower than the temperature provided by the liquid-cooling solution from Swiftech:
The difference doesn’t seem to be too dramatic, but Linpack tests showed that Thermalright IFX-14 with two 140-mm fans can only provide enough cooling for the CPU to overclock to 3.92GHz at 80°C, which is 30MHz and 8/10°C worse than provided by the liquid-cooling system.
The diagram below sums up all these results, disregarding the difference in CPU overclocking:
As to the graphics card cooling, Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ proved even more impressive. RV770 GPU on our Radeon HD 4850 equipped with MCW60 water block overclocked from the nominal 625MHz to 765MHz and its temperature didn’t exceed 32°C under peak workload:
Not bad, isn’t it? By the way, the graphics card itself warmed up considerably less, even though all other components were cooled by means of natural convection. In the same testing conditions one of the best air coolers for graphics cards, Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 with a Turbo-Module could ensure graphics card stability only at 750MHz frequency at 55°C.
It is not quite correct to sum up the thermal advantage of Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ against two high-end air coolers, however, on the other hand, the liquid-cooling system cooled both components – CPU and GPU - at the same time. So, I guess, we can say that Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ turned out 21~23°C more efficient than “air” (-13/14°C GPU and -9/11°C CPU) depending on the operational mode of the liquid-cooling system.
We also have to say a few words about the acoustic performance of the Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ system. In fact, everything here is very simple, because at the minimal radiator fans rotation speed of ~900RPM you can only hear low rumbling of the pump. This operational mode is not completely noiseless, but definitely very quiet. Besides, you will most likely lower the noise by using a shock absorbing pad. With two 120-mm fans at their maximum speed the acoustics is hardly comfortable, however since the temperature difference between the two modes doesn’t exceed 2°C, I don’t think you will really use this mode that much.
Certainly, Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ performed brilliantly in our today’s test session. It confidently defeated the best air coolers in our tests, and the only thing that may slightly cloud this indisputable success is the price of ~380 that you will have to pay for it and not completely noiseless pump operation. However, these two things will hardly discourage dedicated overclocking fans who are no longer satisfied with the air coolers efficiency and are not excited about a DIY solution. If we compare Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ with any DIY solutions of similar efficiency, even if the latter turn out better (which I strongly doubt), Swiftech’s solution has one indisputable advantage: it is ready to go right from the box. You don’t have to search for components, wait for some parts on backorder, make sure everything fits right and then invent a solution and put it all together on your own. The only thing you need to do once you get your new Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra+ out of the box is carefully install all components and connect them with one another. And here you go: you’ve got an excellent liquid-cooling system with remarkable efficiency and low noise.