EK Water Blocks Bringing Open-Loop Liquid Cooling To The Masses With Fluid Gaming Series

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There's certainly a market for setups that have lower core component costs for builders looking to experiment with different approaches.
 


If you're using nickel plated copper already, this isn't for you. Not unless you want to try out a crazy idea and don't want to risk your main computer.

For you, this would only be worth considering if you wanted to test out something like a custom control setup that uses some number of water temp. sensors, and servo-style PID temp. control. I'm sure you could come up with some other insane ideas that would involve a lot of components, lots of connections, and lots of risk. That's where you'd want to look at these. You could have a number of components to throw together at short notice to test out these ideas.

These aren't for builds you've already assembled, or for the final build in your case. They're for making sure your ideas work before investing in $700-$1000 in copper/brass components, D5s, and quality fittings, not to mention the time investment of bending the tubing. Aluminum will work just fine as a proof-of-concept. If you disassemble it when done, it could pay for itself across three or four projects.

In a more general sense, though, these aren't geared towards you at all. They're aimed at people who simply don't want to drop that kind of money on an open loop. If you stick to aluminum for everything, there's no issue with corrosion, and the parts are cheaper.

I am curious how they'll implement the pump, though.
 
Corrosion inhibitors have a useful life of 18 months max. I oversaw the operation a of electrical power plant and we would sample the coolant every 3 months and send out for testing. In my entire tenure, in m not even one instance was it determined that the corrosion inhibitors were at a level which insured protection. It must be noted that these were standby generators and they were tested for two hours every quarter.

Of course they ran during power outages such as Hurricane Sandy providing power to 2000 homes and several hundred businesses. When each of the three generators cost upwards of several million dollars, the testing more than paid for itself. If there was a "install once and forget about it" corrosion inhibitor, they'd be using it on these multi million dollar school bus size engines.

On a PC cooling system, it's cheaper to just change the coolant. Unlike engines which are comprised of various metals, galvanic concerns are far less in a custom loop or OLC like EK and Swiftech units.

On the other hand, even is asked, we will not build a PC with a CLC for anyone under any circumstances. I have no corrosion concerns about an anodized aluminum on a secondary block such as a MoBo Monoblock or RAM block, but the use of such on a CPU or GPU bock simply makes no sense ... and aluminum radiators are just silly.

If you are a bit antsy about building a custom loop, if you every bought and set up a fish tank, you could certainly build a water cooling loop. It's the assembling bock to the CPU / GFX card part that deters most folks. An all-copper / bronze Swiftech (or EK) All-In One combined with GFX card pre-assembled water block from EK is piece of cake. A H240 X2 or 320 X2 will easily handle a 1070 and 7600k, and if ya want twin 1080 Tis, simply add a 2nd radiator.

3 x 120mm (all copper) All-In-One http://www.swiftech.com/h320x2.aspx
EK 1070 w/ EEK Full cover block https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127956

Adding this level of cooling will cost ya ..

An extra $75 over a premium air cooler (Noctua NH-D15 / Cryorig R1)
An extra $33 over a quality AIB 1070 (MSI Gaming X)

You'll need a pair of fittings, some coolant and 2 feet of extra tubing all of which can be had for $20.... but considering it's just $38 more than a Kraken X62 which cools just the CPU, and doesn't do that nearly as well as the Swiftech does, to my eyes, it's the proverbial no brainer.

On the downside, you don't get the built-in galvanic corrosion cell that comes free with the Kraken and all other CLCs.

https://martinsliquidlab.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/corrosion-explored/

That's what happens when corrosion inhibitors lose their effectiveness over time
 
cats_paw, You can get plastic heat sinks. We installed them on a bunch of cards from a customer. They were made of a plastic doped with probably aluminum powder or something like that...they were cheap, light weight, and better than nothing, but fragile.

In theory a single metal system with distilled water is not a recipe for corrosion. But in practice... If they are targeting more entry level and inexperienced builders I could see this being a major problem. How long until someone gets tired of waiting for EK to release a GPU block in the ALU series and buys a copper block from swiftech and destroys their LC system. Or wants to upgrade their system to a higher performance CPU block but doesn't have the money to get the copper rad and res. They'll have to cover their website is disclaimers. Good theory but in practice I think this is a bad idea.
 

Last I checked, "the masses" don't spend upward of $150 just to cool their CPU a little more effectively. >_>

This does look like a nice kit compared to most all-in-ones, though it is priced higher. On the other hand, the setup might last longer, since it should be possible to replace the coolant and clean the system from time to time, or even replace specific components if they wear out. The pump is also on its own, which might offer better noise isolation.
 
If their custom fluid has compatibility with Aluminum material, has a corrosion inhibitor, and will be for a FULL Aluminum based material for the loop it should be ok.
I went full copper. I'm on year two with no issues, and the pH level of the fluid still looks good.
 
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