Reviews EKWB Magnitude CPU Waterblock Review

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Great vid. Lots of thoughts on them. First I really like the looks of these and I'm not generally a fan of ek blocks, but the price is INSANE! I would argue that the mounting on Watercool Heatkiller blocks is also part of their aesthetic, a more brutalist industrial aesthetic, but one that I'm particularly fond of. I'm not entirely sure that the part in the middle that helps channel the water will have a particular impact on cooling performance in changing it for different CPU styles, I would have thought that be more dependent on the jet plate and cooling engine. That middle section is really just there to direct water out properly, making sure the coolant doesn't flow through one side more than the other. I see dev doge hiding in the background. Looking forward to see the bench build series and what custom stuff you come up with. I need those qdc in my life. Not sure what for but I want some anyway. lol

 

Very detailed and interesting response from Joe Robey at EK:

Hi Andy, the Insert is what allowed us to gain such a significant surface area because the coolant can return over the top of the cooling engine rather than around the sides, this is quite novel and it definitely contributes to overall performance. Together with the uneven fin:channel ratio of the coldplate the flow path of the insert allows Magnitude to achieve such high thermal performance with far less restriction as direction changes are minimized. After that point the main factor in extracting all of the performance is contact with the IHS. The insert, jet plate and coldplate are all used together to make that work. The insert provides strength to the plexi/acetal versions as it always made from solid brass and as Alex described the coldplate is curved so that it does not need to be stressed in the assembly.
There are variations in the insert between each socket, they all have a slightly different contact patch with the jet plate so that the mounting pressure is shifted based on the CPU dies. And quite visibly the AM4 version is asymmetrical to direct peak flow over the chiplets. All of this is what contributes to the cost, with so many unique parts for each version and all of them made in relatively small numbers from solid material it's a lesson in how not to reduce costs and that was precisely the intention. We are not trying to replace Velocity or even overlap with special Velocities (like Strike). We had such a beautiful design as a starting point that it deserved everything we could feasibly do with it!

 

Techpowerup have a full review of current blocks which seems to back it up. Will be interesting to see how BT finds it compares to other blocks. I'd like to see a test with lapped blocks and cpu. *Cough @MLyons get sanding cough*

 

We're taking watercooling testing to a whole new level. This is V0.5 of the rig. V1 is done and already gives us more options. V2 will let us test any part of a loop... automatically... over any amount of runs we want... and make fancy graphs. OC and WC content is well and truly in the works.

 

Get one of those fancy lapping machines kingpin has.

 

something something walk before running

 

Sod that, go straight into base jumping! Ha ha

 

Here are some very early ALPHA graphs from the suite using my laptop

 

as I said. Alpha. The newer version shows the min, average and max clock speeds across the cores.

 

As soon as I've setup my offshore bank account. Hopefully next waterblock video