I have never quite understood this aluminium blank sheet that they have cutting across half of the block. Their usual waterblocks in full plexi are much nicer.

I have never quite understood this aluminium blank sheet that they have cutting across half of the block. Their usual waterblocks in full plexi are much nicer.

it's marketing... when you see an EK you have this aluminium band, when you see XSPC you have light around, alpha is rough design with lot of attachment (old style) and huge pasive cooler (new style), and aquacomputer is tinted plexi or bimetal... it's only to reconise the brand at 1st glance. is it usefull... hmm no, with proper vent on drm, a GPU only cooler is enough... but yes i prefer full cover for the aestetic looking. we can +1 EK for making full cover for exotic PCB, there is not too much who do that.

Well I'd rather see them make more custom mainboard blocks, but with the strix they probably reach around 25% of 980 users, so it's not really that exotic I guess. Still, good to see it's not just reference designs!

I don't understand why people bother with full custom water loops when there are perfectly fine sealed cpu solution that work just aswell and can be moved from gpu to gpu. Waste of money for little to no benefit. Max 5 c performance benefit.

for silence... one pump to unifie all... my precious 🙂 (work even fine if it is in other room with the Helia cooler unit). about perf i totaly agree, but there is some other spec: -space (i love 1 slot card) -silence -design (not for me, industrial chassis from LD, and no window). -reliability this is why there are so much design.

I don't understand why people bother with full custom water loops when there are perfectly fine sealed cpu solution that work just aswell and can be moved from gpu to gpu. Waste of money for little to no benefit. Max 5 c performance benefit.

What a silly comment. They do full custom loops because it looks a lot better and is more quiet.

I don't understand why people bother with full custom water loops when there are perfectly fine sealed cpu solution that work just aswell and can be moved from gpu to gpu. Waste of money for little to no benefit. Max 5 c performance benefit.

People use custom loops because they perform considerably better than AIO coolers. The integrated block/pump unit generates heat, which has to be dissipated along with the heat generated by the CPU or GPU. That reduces efficiency. When the water is heated by components on both sides, it's ability to cool both components is reduced.