Summary
EK’s full cover Impact performs excellently beating EK’s own Supremacy and Koolance CPU-380 that dominated our earlier 3930K based testing and 4770K based testing. Not only does it cool the CPU better than a standalone CPU block but it also does an excellent if possibly unnecessary job of cooling the VRM and south bridge. If you want the ultimate in cooling for your haswell CPU and you have a Maximus VI Impact this is the best water cooling solution that we have tested.
However the block doesn’t support a naked (IHS removed) CPU and we hope that given this success that EK will offer a tuned version for a naked mount die given that the VRMs really can’t be pushed unless you void that warranty. Our only other quibbles were having to remove the backplate on the existing CPU socket, something that requires care and the wrong size screws was also a disappointment. While the price is also significantly higher than a standalone block it’s cheaper than buying a seperate cpu block and motherboard block and I’m excited to see more of these combined blocks for future motherboards.
In summary the quibbles are fairly minor and given the excellent performance there is no reason not to award this the Extreme Rigs Gold Award:
Where to buy: PPCs – $123
I would love a Maximus Gene VI version of this. The southbridge might be cooled without the inlets and outlets blocking the second PCIE 3.0 slot. But mostly it would just look bad ass.
[…] you’re focussed on every last degree you might want to wait for EK’s monoblock. In our Impact testing we saw that the monoblock performed better thermally as well as being lower restriction than a […]
[…] we’ve had a new CPU block up for test. The last mini cpu block testing we did was on the Impact Monoblock. For this review we will still be testing on the 4770K/Max VI Impact combo, but at a different […]
Most consumers will be considering Monoblock (based on the previous Supremacy) vs the Supremacy EVO, comparison of Delta T vs Supremacy EVO would make an interesting comparison also. It would also be interested to know the pressure drop of this monoblock compared to CPU only solutions.
I think these would be relevant given that Z97 chipset and Power MOSFET passive temperatures don’t seem excessive.
Anyways, thank you. Appreciate the review.
Comments are closed.