The Watercool Heatkiller GPU-X Titan/GTX780 water block comes in a few different varieties:
Copper/Stainless Steel
Copper/Stainless Steel Hole Edition
“Ni-Bl” – Nickel Plated Copper/Anodized Black Hole Edition
In this review the photos are of the Copper/Stainless Steel Hole Edition. The Watercool boxes are always very consistent:
The packaging is good and the block doesn’t move around at all:
The accessories are small in number consisting only of thermal pads, screws, washers and an allen key to tighten down the socket cap screws. I much prefer to have socket cap screws simply because they look a lot better.
The block is attractive and the stainless steel is polished:
The underside of the block is unusual. The standoffs are plastic which may not necessarily be a bad thing as they can deform if a tighter fit is required. However the screw holes are tapped into the copper rather than into a metal that is less likely to strip:
The bridge is removable and attractive too and is made out of POM:
Internals
These are taken after testing so some wear and tear on the block is expected. The core channels are fine and there is some extra surface area for the VRMs, but not much:
The stainless steel plate really is just a stainless steel plate:
Performance
For more detail of the testing check out the detailed analysis page. The Watercool Heatkiller performs averagely if run at ~1GPM:
However it does much better at lower flows where it comes in second:
The thin thermal pads help to give decent VRM temperatures where again it comes in second:
The VRMs however have thicker thermal pads help and so the block only performs in the middle of the pack:
Flow wise the block is in the middle of the pack, impressive that it can give such good low flow performance even without being highly restrictive.
Fitting
The Heatkiller was easy to fit and I like the choice the socket cap screws for aesthetic reasons. While philips heads screws might be a little less likely to strip, given the block threads are tapped into the copper you don’t want to be overtorquing the screw anyway. Better to strip a bolt than the block.
Summary 8/10 -Silver Award
A strong performer that is always in the top half of all the performance metrics. Sadly the competition is too strong to let this triumph overall, but it’s certainly not a bad choice and the attention to detail is evident
Where to buy: PPCs – $118-140, Backplate – $37
Next -> XSPC
