The rest of the water-cooling kit
The waterblock and associated fittings are only one part of the cooling equation, and just how well the whole card performs is a function of how cool the heat-removing liquid can be kept as it circulates around the system.
The all-in-one block - which contains a pump, radiator, reservoir and fan - is powered by a spare Molex connector and fits into the chassis section that's normally reserved for a rear-mounted fan, just behind the CPU's socket. As such, the L-shaped design, when being installed, may impinge on some very tall coolers' heat-pipes - the Scythe Mine in an Akasa Eclipse-62, for example.
Water is pushed through from the unit to the waterblock where it absorbs the heat from the two GPUs and memory chips. It then makes its way back where it's cooled by the radiator/fan assembly, shown above.
The 120mm fan is no quieter than the reference card-based heatsink's when idle and rather louder when the GPUs are under load, controlled by the temperatures on the twin GPUs.
The fan's speed cannot be modulated by the user, though, and takes away one of the benefits from watercooling - a quiet-ish setup.
Further, the user cannot gain easy access to the assembly if a liquid top-up is required.
Here is the radiator that bolts on to the rear of your chassis. Installation is a cinch if you can fit the radiator/fan behind the CPU's cooler easily enough, but the length of tubing, which can be best-described as meagre, means that positioning the card in a lower PCIe x16 slot isn't practical.
And installed into our system.
AMD's will be releasing a CrossFireX driver on March 4, 2008, we hear, where two Radeon HD 3870 X2s can be teamed for four-GPU rendering. However, placing a second all-in-one unit isn't possible in most chassis - the tubing is neither long enough and there's no real space in which to locate another unit internally.
Summary
At a HEXUS-guesstimate price of £329 or so, or £60 above a regular R680, the ATOMIC 3870 X2 is a water-cooled Radeon HD 3870 X2 from Sapphire that's no quieter than an air-cooled card. The all-in-one unit cannot be easily user-serviced and may foul tall CPU coolers with extravagant heat-pipe arrangements.However, let's see if its foibles can be redeemed by excellent performance....
