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News EKWB shows off new 'Magnitude' CPU block and updated product range

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 29 May 2019.

  1. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    Shh, I remember DD blocks and branded radiators more than I remember AC.

    I genuinely don't recall Aqua Computer as an entity within the block market at that point.
     
  2. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    American radiators still give me nightmares.

    If you didn't get every last bit of gunk in them flushed out they could dirty the coolant... and with how insanely hard it used to be to get hold of distilled water in western Europe (it actually still is, but the likes of Mayhem, EK etc have made it obsolete) that really was a massive turn off.
    Luckily eventually Hardwarelabs came along and delivered us from evil dirty rads.
     
  3. Maki role

    Maki role Dale you're on a roll... Lover of bit-tech

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    If only Danger Den blocks weren’t beyond hideous, even back then.

    It’s a circlejerk, this is a beyond fantastic time to be getting into the field of watercooling. You can watercool on a budget using Chinese brands like Barrow and Bykski, or are we just going to ignore their existence because reasons?
     
  4. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

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    EKs Fluid Gaming series, with the full alu blocks and fittings perform almost on par and far cheaper.

    Water cooling became more expensive when people stopped water cooling for the sake of cooling and started doing it for esthetic reasons.
     
    Impatience and EKJake like this.
  5. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Every petrol station, garage (e.g. Halfords as 'battery top-up fluid'), even my local Tesco carries distilled water in big 5L jugs for a few quid. You don't get it in a little bottle with a fancy "special watercooling juice!" label, but regular old distilled water is ubiquitous and both readily and cheaply available in any country that has cars.

    You can still do cheap WC with aquarium pumps, car radiators, worm-screw clamp fittings and basic blocks. And you can do all the ancillary mucking about like cleaning and flushing the radiators, manually priming your noisy pump and shoving bits of foam under it to try and isolate it, fartarsing about with leaky fittings trying to get them to seal without the clamps cutting through the tubing, etc, just like you used to. As well as inflation, you pay for o-rings not made of cheese and to a "well it fits on there when you shove it on" tolerance, radiators that are ready to use out of the box, fitting threads that don't need chasing and teflon tape, etc.
     
  6. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Barrow and Bykski have pretty much gone premium these days, once you factor in import costs you'll probably be cheaper off with brands like Thermalcopy or XSPC.

    Or just buy the regular EK block that is less than half the price of the one with with a thin slab of wood stuck on top.
    And no, there is nothing you can say that would justify more than doubling the price for a gpu sized piece of wood.
     
  7. Wakka

    Wakka Yo, eat this, ya?

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    I blame Bitspower - when they came out with all those fancy angled compression fittings that cost £8/10/12 a pop, other manufactures realised they could add a bit of extra bling for a lot of extra MSRP.


    #wormdrives4lyfe
     
  8. EKJake

    EKJake EK Forum Rep

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    Something to keep in mind is that the Lignum GPU block includes the backplate and 2 of the Lignum fittings. And the CPU block also includes two Lignum fittings.
     
    MLyons likes this.
  9. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    One Graphicscard sized decorative object made from aluminium is worth approx 30 Euro according to EK.
    Two of them makes 60 Euro (one attached to the block + one for the back).
    Then throw in the fittings (2x 18) and the cost of the regular block (150) and that gets you to around 250 Euros.

    And no one is going to believe that making two graphicscard size flat pieces of wood costs 100 Euro more than making them from aluminium.

    So even taking your own prices as gospel: The Lignum GPU block should cost 250 Euro, not 350.
     
  10. Maki role

    Maki role Dale you're on a roll... Lover of bit-tech

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    Don't forget to take into account additional setup time for the parts since the tooling won't be the same. Also you can't expect the lignum parts to sell at the same volume as the others, so economies of scale have to be taken into account too. Time that could have been spent producing the high volume, easy sale parts has to be devoted to the niche products, which will always end up expensive.

    Ultimately, why quibble over the price of something like that? Just make it yourself.
     
  11. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    Water cooling doesn't need to be that expensive. There are a magnitude of ways to do it on the cheap.

    I use Bitspower 11/8 fittings I picked up for 99p-£2 each. Sure, I used some expensive ones but that was only because I wanted a certain look. If you want to avoid vanity and do it merely for the cooling (like it used to be IMO it was ugly AF then) then it can be done. My pump (18w DDC? IIRC?) was £35 on sale because it had a Molex connector. Five minuutes with the solder iron and it was then a 3 pin (it had a molex for power and a yellow signal wire to show RPM on a 3 pin). My res is Bitspower, bought in the sale for £25. I bought a AC block for £18 on Ebay brand new and sealed, and a few other parts I got from shopping around.

    My rads were expensive @ £60 each, but then I was going for a certain look. Before that I used rads I found on OCUK's clearance. They were much cheaper. In fact, at one stage I built a whole loop for £120 which was about the same as the equivalent AIO. My GPU block is a EK IIRC and it cost me £54 on clearance. Mind you that said my card is pretty old (Titan XP I've had for nearly two years) but there's still no reason or need for me to upgrade so I call deal on that block and again, I only really bought it for the look as I already had one that worked fine.

    I've also found Chinese pumps that are pretty ugly but true bargains. £9 for a pump with ceramic bearings and parts. I also ran those pumps for nearly two years before retiring them (again for vanity reasons mostly, well, and a pump that could power a whole loop) but yeah, you can do it veeeeeery cheap if you want to. Probably less than £60 for the whole loop. There are some pretty nice Chinese reservoirs out there too, kinda like this one.

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cylinder...444beb37b6450eb803903181dd981a&frcectupt=true

    Which not only works really well it looks nicely made too.
     
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