First Watercooling Loop

Blocks

In our 2012 CPU Roundup we gave the gold award to the Koolance CPU-380i. If you want a copper block then check out the Supremacy, Apogee or Raystorm. The only thing to really check is that the block is compatible with the make and socket of your CPU!

For GPUs you can get “full cover” blocks or “universal” blocks. “Full Cover” blocks cool the GPU core, plus memory and the voltage regulator modules. In other words they cool everything that needs to be cooled. This sounds great, but it does come with a downside because they are usually only compatible with the reference model of that particular GPU only. If you ever change your card you will have to toss the block away (or sell it). A reference card refers to whether the circuit board is the original design provided by AMD or NVidia. The giveaway is whether there is an AMD or NVIDIA logo just above the PCI slot. However this is not a hard and fast rule. EK have a good tool to help called the cooling configurator. In the tool you can input your graphics card model and it will tell you what products are compatible.

In our 2013 GTX Titan/780 Block roundup we gave the gold awards to EK and XSPC. EK should be praised for making a large variety of blocks for non reference GPUs also. We have not yet round up the universal blocks but are working on it for the R9-290(x) block roundup.

Universal blocks differ from full cover blocks because they only cool the main GPU core itself. This is analogous to the CPU blocks which do not for example also cover the VRMs on the motherboard. They are universal because they will typically be compatible with any GPU card and can be reused as you upgrade. Currently memory on a video card does not get hot enough to really need cooling. The VRMs however will still need some cooling, and some extra heatsinks may need to be bought in order to cool these.

If in doubt buy a reference graphics card and a full cover block.