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Cooler Master Hydra 8800 Hybrid GPU Cooler Review

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Cooler Master Hydra 8800 Hybrid GPU Cooler Review




Price: $70-80USD Estimated MSRP
Availability: ~2 Weeks
Warranty: 1 year
Manufacturer Product Page: Cooler Master



It hasn't been long since we last looked at a Cooler Master product with their excellent Real Power Pro power supply. While power supplies are only one of their many products, the bread and butter of their business is still in the area of cooling products. From fans to CPU heatsinks; their cooling products run the gamut of pretty much everything a DIYer may need for his or her build. One thing that they were missing in their lineup was an 8800-series GPU cooler and with the product we will be reviewing here today, they have filled the gap...though with a hybrid air/water cooler.

Cooler Master needs no introduction to air cooling enthusiasts, but their forays into water cooling have received a lukewarm reception at best from the enthusiast community. In the past, Cooler Master has focused on low end kits rather than discrete components. Yet more recetly they have been narrowing their focus by offering some products that promise to cater to the exact people who shunned them in the past. Today we have the opportunity to review a very unique product from Cooler Master: the Hydra 8800GTX cooler.

With the Hydra, Cooler Master looks to be offering the best of both worlds: it has a fan for air cooling while there are a pair of nozzels for water cooling. According to Cooler Master you can use either air OR water cooling or both at the same time to lower your temperatures even more. This is quite unique but at about $70-$80USD, this cooler does represent a significant investment considering it is very close in price to a number of popular GPU water blocks. It will be very interesting to see how this performs.

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SKYMTL

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Packaging / What's Included

Packaging

While it's difficult to wax lyrical about a box when there are important things like the product itself to talk about, I have to comment on the package for the Hydra 8800 since it is quite unique.

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The retail box is eye catching since it is quite shiny. It offers a clear view of the product and all the key information including specifications and key features of the Hydra. Personally this is all I ask for from a retail box because it makes shopping much easier when you can decide for yourself if you like the look of the product and if the specifications sound good before opening it​

While the box is obviously not a shipping box, the cooler itself and all accessories are well protected from light bumps by a plastic insert. I had no difficulty removing the cooler from the plastic package thanks to the lack of any sharp edges and complete absence of those annoying sealed clamshell packs. Kudos to Cooler Master for making their packaging idiot-proof.​


What's Included

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Cooler Master includes everything you need to use your new Hydra 8800 straight out of the box. You can use it straight away with an air cooling setup, a 1/2" water cooling setup or a 3/8" water cooling setup. You also get some thermal pads, extra 1/2" fittings (the 3/8" fittings are attached to the Hydra 8800 already), mounting hardware and a 4-3 pin fan to molex adapter.

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The mounting screws are mostly redundant because they are the same as the ones that are already attaching your stock cooler. Yet, it's really nice to see Cooler Master go the extra mile to include both 3/8" fittings (top) and 1/2" fittings (bottom).

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That said, the included fittings are proprietary (I doubt they work on anything but this cooler) rather than being chrome plated g1/4 and are compatible with only 1/8" wall tubing. I am not a fan of these since they are extremely restrictive and are made of plastic. Ugh.

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The last two items included in the package were the things I appreciated the most: Instructions, and silica gel. The instructions tasted great, and I was about to eat the silica gel when I noticed the huge warning on it. Cooler Master continues to protect our most special citizens so more kudos to them. On a more serious note, the instructions were clear, concise and in more languages than you can shake a stick at.
 

SKYMTL

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Exterior/ Interior Impressions

Exterior Impressions

When I first laid eyes on the Hydra 8800, I said "oh, that looks an awful lot like the stock heatsink, but looks a whole lotcooler". No pun intended at all, I just mean it looks neatsy-keen. (Tell me you didn't just say that - Ed.)As I looked more closely at it, something became apparent... it basically IS a stock cooler.

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I mean... sure, the stock fan has been replaced with a blue LED fan and there is now a high performance metal shroud with cool artwork (both of which are believed to make frame rates increase by 5% each) but when you look under the metal shroud...

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.... that extra "performance" is only being held on by some double sided tape!

Now maybe I'm being too harsh. The reference 8800GTX cooler is a very well-designed heatpipe solution that is both quiet and capable of taming the extremely hot G80 core. Needless to say my first impressions of this cooler were less than stellar considering all it seems to be is a modified stock cooler. That said, you're not doing reading quite yet... stick around for the performance numbers since this decision to use a stock heatsink MIGHT have been absolutely brilliant on Cooler Master's part. Why mess with a good thing, right?

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One thing I don't miss is the non-standard 4 pin design used by nVidia for their heatsinks. I appreciate being able to choose my own fan speed without messing around with nTune. Cooler Master thought of this and had the good sense to include a 3 pin connector on their fan as well as a molex adapter for those who want to use a 4 pin power cable.

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Cooler Master thoughtfully protected the underside of the copper GPU contact plate with a piece of removable plastic. We have seen in the past that some manufacturers tend to leave their bases open to the elements so it is good to see that Cooler Master protected theirs quite well.

I've seen shinier finishes, but shiny without flat is not important. The base is flat enough to provide good contact, but it's not dramatically better than the stock cooler's finish.

Interior Impressions

If you already own an 8800GTX, lean over, look at your stock heatsink. That's the internals of the Hydra 8800.... With a twist! They added the new fan and they also added a water cooling tube attached to one of the internal heatpipes.

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Cooler Master made room for the tube by removing some of the air cooling fins and we'll find out in the results whether this has a noticeable impact on the air cooling performance of the Hydra 8800. The tubing they use looks rather restrictive, but we can forgive a less-than-stellar water cooling design for the flexibility afforded by the Hydra 8800. As of the time this review is published, the Hydra it is the ONLY GPU cooler on the market that is able to operate both with and without water cooling.

The water cooling tube is soldered to one of the heatpipes that already exists in the reference heatsink design. That means heat has to be transferred from the GPU to the base plate and then all the way to the heatpipe. Whether this long journey for the heat has an impact on performance remains to be seen.
 

SKYMTL

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Installation & Instructions

Installation & Instructions

Now that we're done picking apart every fine detail of the Hydra 8800, it's time to install it on our test video card; an eVGA 8800 GTX Superclocked. We've pre-removed the stock heatsink and we won't show you that process since there are already many guides available on the internet that include the removal of the stock 8800 heatsink.

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Cooler Master's instructions made this very simple, but the process was also fairly easy to do because once you've removed the reference heatsink, you know how to install the new one. As discussed before, that is exactly what the Hydra is: a stock heatsink with a few bits added on.

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First we applied the included thermal compound (which appears to be the same compound present on the reference design) in the middle of the GPU. Then, being sure not to miss any of them we applied thermal transfer pads to all 4 VRM banks, and all 12 memory modules.

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Now the card is ready for us to install our new cooler. Being careful to line up the hole spacing so that the thermal pads don't shift, place the Hydra 8800 on top of the card, then flip the whole thing over to attach them together.​

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Cooler Master recommends using little black isolators to ensure that no electricity is conducted between the PCB of the card, and the screws. We put each screw in a little bit, then went around and tightened them all individually. Overall, installation went by without a hitch.

And here is the finished result:

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SKYMTL

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Air / Water Cooing Performance Tests

Air / Water Cooling Performance Tests

Test Bed Hardware

System Hardware:

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R rev.2.0
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.6GHz 1.5Vcore (in BIOS) 9x400
2x1GB Corsair Dominator PC2-10000
eVGA 8800 GTX Superclocked
OCZ GameXStream 600W power supply
Samsung 80GB SATA2 HDD
Lite-On IDE DVD-ROM


Software Used: Rivatuner GPU temperature monitoring


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Water Cooling Hardware:

Swiftech MCP655 variable pump (set to 5 for all performance tests and 1 for bleeding)
Clearflex 1/2" ID 3/4" OD tubing
Thermochill PA120.2 radiator with 2x Yate Loon D12SL-12 @ 12V
Picnic-sized cooler reservoir
Arctic Silver Ceramique thermal compound used on STEALTH (included in the box)
OMEGA HH506RA dual input thermometer using Type T probes in the reservoir and in front of the radiator intake


Testing Methodology

Each cooler was measured at idle (windows desktop), then the video card was loaded using 3Dmark 2006 SM3.0 tests looped for 10 minutes running at 1280x1024 8xAA 16xAF. Idle temperatures did not fluctuate for any of the cards, and for load temps, the highest recorded temperature in Rivatuner was taken as a peak load temperature.

I'll be reporting on temperatures while using the reference cooler, the Hydra 8800 with only air, the Hydra 8800 with air and water, and the Swiftech STEALTH using water cooling. The Swiftech STEALTH was equipped with D-TEK 1/2" high flow barbs, and the Cooler Master used the included 1/2" compression fittings (but without the ends on them. Zip ties were used to secure the tubing due to the design of the fittings).​

**Operating the Hydra 8800 with only water cooling is not included because it is not a recommended operating method for the cooler according to Cooler Master. The water contact area is only on one of the heatpipes in the fins, and thus would offer very little in terms of cooling to the IO chip (too far away and not directly connected to the heatpipe) or the MOSFETS on the card.**​

Ambient temperatures at the radiator intake were measured to vary between 20.5C and 21.7C. Water temperatures were between 22.6C and 24.0C as measured by a Type-T thermistor throughout testing. Please account for 1-3 degree margin of error when interpreting the results.


Air Cooling Performance

First let's have a look at how well the Cooler Master Hydra 8800 performs with air cooling. I honestly didn't have very high hopes for this aspect of the performance testing, given that the Hydra is basically a stock cooler with some of the fins removed and a different (less efficient looking) fan.

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Not bad actually. It is hard to say how much of that can be attributed to my excellent job of keeping the thermal compound thin (not sure if you've ever seen the job the factory does on the reference cooler....), and how much can be attributed to the fan the Hydra uses, but it manages the pull the core down a couple degrees lower under load, even with fewer fins.


Water Cooling Performance

Next we have the make-or-break part of a water block review: How well it performs when you're actually running water through it. Just as a reminder, the Hydra was tested with the fan running in addition to the water. This is the configuration we would recommend using for best performance with the Hydra.

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This reviewer almost crapped his pants when he saw the numbers (that's me). I was very surprised to see the Hydra walk away from the reference cooler with just a little bit of water contact between a copper tube and one of the reference cooler's heatpipes. This thing really works. The STEALTH, a more conventional water block outperforms the Hydra by a few degrees, but it's also quite a bit more expensive and doesn't have the flexibility to be used without water. This result is very good.​
 

SKYMTL

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Conclusion

Conclusion

My first impressions were way off. I looked at this thing as a demented sibling of the reference design. To be honest, I was expecting WORSE air temperatures than stock in the air cooling tests due to the unusual shape of the LED fan and the removal of some of the air cooling fins. The Hydra in its air cooled form -although not dramatically better than the reference cooler- did outperform the reference cooler by a few degrees. I think most of this is due to the higher RPM of the fan, but subjectively it was not loud enough to be obnoxious even though it was a bit louder than the stock one.

What surprised me even more was how competitive the Hydra became once the switch was made to water cooling. Load temperatures went down by about 20 degrees just by putting a little pipe full of water up against a heat pipe in the standard cooler. Although the Hydra's hybrid air/water design does not allow it to excel in either category (air or water cooling) as compared to something like the HR-03 Plus or the Swiftech Stealth, it performs passably well at both and this makes it an entirely unique product on the market right now.

All of that said, it's very difficult to say exactly what Cooler Master's target audience is for this product. Most people who are after an aftermarket air cooler have no desire to go water. Also, most people who want to go with water are going to spend the money on water cooling system are probably going to go with a more conventional water block. One thing I do see this product being very useful for is for someone who enjoys the improved performance water brings but also wants to be able to easily remove their motherboard from the system sometimes. That way they could run air cooling when they need easy access to their components and water at other times. Another reason to use this product would be if you want to protect your investment. With both the air cooler and the water cooler running, even if a fan or a pump dies your card will not overheat. It's nearly impossible for this product to fail when running both the fan and the water.

While this may all sound like I love this product, there are definately things here that need to be improved. One major issue with this cooler is no fault of Cooler Master but rather changing market trends. Considering the 8800GTX is on its way out (it has been on the market for over a year now) the Hydra seems too little too late considering it is Cooler Master's only 8800-series cooler to date. I was also not a huge fan of the cheap plastic barbs which are only compatible with 1/8" wall tubing. If this cooler would have been released 6 months ago with better barbs and slightly better performance it would have received a better score.

When it comes down to it, whether the Hydra 8800 is right for you or not will depend on your personal usage patterns and how favorable the performance numbers look for you. I'll finish this review off with a night shot of the 8800 GTX running with the Hydra 8800 installed.

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Pros:

- The only aftermarket cooler that is capable of air and liquid cooling
- Brain-dead easy to use both for installation and not cutting oneself on the box
- Offered water cooling performance that SURPRISED THE HECK out of this reviewer
- Simple design has few points of failure (ie leaking)
- Fail-safe solution
- Ingenious modification of the reference design
- Includes high performance blue LED shroud and shiny shroud/sticker
- Outperforms the reference cooler with the fans on auto for each cooler in air mode and beats it by 21 degrees under load when assisted with water


Cons:

- Jack of all trades, master of none. It's not the best at air or water, but it does both of them, and passably well.
- Included barbs are made of shiny plastic
- Included barbs are compatible with uncommon 1/8" wall tubing only
- Louder than the stock cooler by default
- Late to market

The bottom line: Recommended with reservations

 
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