This week in water cooling – Watercool, Swiftech and of course EK

Watercool has started to offer a wide range of Barrow’s fittings in it’s store.

The fittings are available for purchase in Watercool’s store in many different shapes and sizes. Barrow has been a long term favorite of those who love Bitspower but dislike their prices.  We definitely think that Bitspower have the best fittings out there, they are high quality and even though your fingers will suffer from tightening that knurled pattern they have never let us down.  Originally Barrow was supposed to be the OEM for Bitspower and would sell the same fittings on the side.  Now it’s less clear whether that is still the case but it sounds like retailers who stock Bitspower can’t stock Barrow and vice versa, so there is definitely some bad blood there.  Bitspower’s CEO reached out to us to clarify the situation with Barrow.  He made it clear that Barrow were never the OEM for Bitspower and that the two factories have been seperate with Bitspower’s in Taiwan and Barrow in China.  He said that there is a difference in the materials and in the quality and that they are a knock off and not at all identical even though they look similar.  Certainly we’ve been hesitant of recommending companies that do shady knockoffs (cough, thermaltake, cough) so we are surprised that Watercool who had a great reputation thus far would work with Barrow on this.

In contrast with EK’s ZMT tubing, Watercool started to offer something similar, called EPDM:

The tubing is advertised with the following specifications:

• completely plasticizer-free
• kink resistant
• black matte tubing

It comes in (the dimensions are in expressed in mm):

• 16/10 OD/ID
• 13/10 OD/ID
• 10/8 OD/ID
• 8/6 OD/ID
• 6/4 OD/ID

The tubing is available in Watercool’s store.  These sizes are nice because EK’s ZMT only comes in one size.  We like EK’s ZMT tube for long term functional builds because it doesn’t age as quickly as clear tube and it can still look good too.  In fact that is why we use it on our water cooling test bench.

Both fittings and tubing are available to purchase starting from $4.95 for the most basic compression fitting and $3.95 per meter for EPDM tubing.

This is the first time we’ve really seen Watercool use other’s products and we suspect this means that they will be launching a kit soon once they add a fan to the lineup.  Previously they had focussed on water blocks and pump tops, then they added the sexy heatkiller reservoirs recently and so we expect a fan and a full kit to be coming in the next year.

Swiftech has added four new members to their reservoir lineup which is under the MaelStrom brand.

The reservoirs are equipped with Swiftech IRIS technology, which allows built-in RGB LEDs.  These particular reservoirs are called the Maelstrom D5 because they feature a built in D5 pump in a PWM version.  The reservoirs are provided with 50,000 hours MTBF which is really just based on the pump.

There are four versions, which incorporate their tube size into their name:

• X50(50mm)
• X100(100mm)
• X200(200mm)
• X300(300mm)

We like that Swiftech are bringing more options to market and we love cylinder style reservoirs with an integrate pump.  It makes the system simple to setup and bleed.  We also think these are pretty good looking.

Pricing and availability

Reservoirs are available to purchase on Swiftech’s website and feature the following price:

• X50 – $145.95
• X100 – $149.95
• X200 – $159.95
• X300 – $174.95

Source:TPU

EK is busy as ever and has started to roll out a bunch of new products which are mainly RGB LED updates to existing products.  This is about time as EK have often supported LEDs on their products by leaving holes in the acrylic but never included an LED (as XSPC has forever) or made it RGB (as Swiftech did forever – well if you include using gels with a white LED as RGB lol).

RX VEGA Water Blocks

EKWB has started to offer two new RGB waterblocks for RX VEGA GPUs.  EK-FC Radeon Vega is a waterblock made for AMD’s reference design boards.

The waterblock features a new design from EK, that has a bottom metal cover with integrated RGB lighting. In the box, there is a single-slot I/O bracket, which you can use to replace the dual slot bracket, and use the card as single slot solution.

The waterblock is compatible with:

• Radeon Vega Frontier Edition
• Radeon RX Vega 64
• Radeon RX Vega 56

Pricing and availability

The waterblock is available to be purchased in EK’s store and has the following prices:

The other new vega block is made for the ASUS Strix series of RX VEGA GPUs

The block is compatible with ASUS’ AURA software and has a redesigned look too.

Pricing and availability:

The waterblock is available for purchase in EK’s store for the following price:

GeForce GTX waterblocks

EK has released a new waterblock made for GTX 1060, 1070, 1080, 1080 TI and Titan X Pascal/Xp

The waterblock is compatible with a whopping 138 graphics cards. That is possible due to standard founders edition PCB layout, which is used by many GPU models by AIB partners who often just replace heatsinks.

Pricing and availability:

The waterblock is available to purchase on EK’s store and has the following price

EK has also launched a newly designed waterblock for ASUS ROG Strix GTX 1080 TI

The waterblock also features RGB lighting and new block design.

Note that this waterblock is compatible with old EK-FC1080 GTX TI Backplate, but there will be newly designed backplates coming too, so keep an eye on that.

Pricing and availability:

The waterblock is available for purchase through the EK WebShop with the following price:

EK Supremacy EVO RGB

Since its introduction in 2012, EK’s Supremacy waterblock’s performance has remained competitive over the years due to tweaks in the core, mount, bow and jetplate.  However they have retained an unchanged external design with only the unpopular CSQ variation giving a noticeable change in aesthetic.  EK decided to finally change that.

EK has re-built the CPU waterblock using the same Supremacy EVO cooling engine, but added a plexi top, with of course RGB lighting.

The baseplate is made out of machined copper with 52 fins on the base. The fins are 0.25mm apart. The top is made out of machined plexi and it is designed to fit in the new block casing that hides the RGB LEDs

The waterblock comes in two versions, both for AMD and Intel mounting, covering both use cases.

Pricing and availability:

The waterblock is available to be purchased on EK’s webshop and has the following price:

Source: EKWB