crazyglue
New member
Got my block in on Friday, spent the day yesterday and this morning getting my rig all put together.
Few things to note about the block. It doesnt provide any cooling for the capacitors or the VRMs of the card. This is a bit concerning as I plan to keep a consistent overclock on the card, but so far in my testing I haven't found any issue with this. Maybe it could effect reliability long term.
Another thing is that the LED strip on the bottom is a little bit odd. First, the color it produces is a tinge lighter than the rest of my system's LEDs. The other thing is that there are 2 LEDs towards the back of the card (under the pci-e power connectors) which seem to shine through different material than the rest of the LEDs. This makes them extremely bright compared to the other 10 or so (see pics)
All of this is pretty minor overall and I'm still very happy with my purchase
However, a pretty concerning issue I noticed is that the block doesnt secure onto the rear IO plate in any way. There is no screw/mounting hole for the top of the bracket in the acrylic, so the only place the bracket is secured to the card is the bottom, near the pci-slot. This means the plate can bend away from the block, and when installing I noticed the block was very wobbly as a result. I WOULD NOT TRUST THIS CARD+BLOCK TO BE MOUNTED HORIZONTALLY, THINGS WILL SNAP. Thankfully I'm mounted vertically (see pics)
^ This needs to be fixed in a future revision!
Another alarming issue I found is that when I'm installing my watercooling components, I like the check the manufacturer's work and make sure all the screws are nice and snug. I went around every screw on the acrylic and noticed 2 screws were completely loose, right around the GPU core. I had to tighten them down by a full rotation before they were snug. Not sure if this happened during shipping or if it came out of the factory like this. Either way I'm very glad I decided to check the screws. Afterwards I inspected the o-rings all around the card and could see there was positive contact so I was satisfied to keep moving forward
All that being said, my system is up and running without any issues, and my GPU temperatures have dramatically improved (i cant get the card to push past 45C in any workload at 2.1ghz, with fans on silent, low rpm mode)
Would recommend the block to those looking to watercool, but with the caveat of making sure its vertically mounted, and make sure the screws are snug before you install anything
Pics:
Few things to note about the block. It doesnt provide any cooling for the capacitors or the VRMs of the card. This is a bit concerning as I plan to keep a consistent overclock on the card, but so far in my testing I haven't found any issue with this. Maybe it could effect reliability long term.
Another thing is that the LED strip on the bottom is a little bit odd. First, the color it produces is a tinge lighter than the rest of my system's LEDs. The other thing is that there are 2 LEDs towards the back of the card (under the pci-e power connectors) which seem to shine through different material than the rest of the LEDs. This makes them extremely bright compared to the other 10 or so (see pics)
All of this is pretty minor overall and I'm still very happy with my purchase
However, a pretty concerning issue I noticed is that the block doesnt secure onto the rear IO plate in any way. There is no screw/mounting hole for the top of the bracket in the acrylic, so the only place the bracket is secured to the card is the bottom, near the pci-slot. This means the plate can bend away from the block, and when installing I noticed the block was very wobbly as a result. I WOULD NOT TRUST THIS CARD+BLOCK TO BE MOUNTED HORIZONTALLY, THINGS WILL SNAP. Thankfully I'm mounted vertically (see pics)
^ This needs to be fixed in a future revision!
Another alarming issue I found is that when I'm installing my watercooling components, I like the check the manufacturer's work and make sure all the screws are nice and snug. I went around every screw on the acrylic and noticed 2 screws were completely loose, right around the GPU core. I had to tighten them down by a full rotation before they were snug. Not sure if this happened during shipping or if it came out of the factory like this. Either way I'm very glad I decided to check the screws. Afterwards I inspected the o-rings all around the card and could see there was positive contact so I was satisfied to keep moving forward
All that being said, my system is up and running without any issues, and my GPU temperatures have dramatically improved (i cant get the card to push past 45C in any workload at 2.1ghz, with fans on silent, low rpm mode)
Would recommend the block to those looking to watercool, but with the caveat of making sure its vertically mounted, and make sure the screws are snug before you install anything
Pics: