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.

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.

are you talking about rigging h50-80's or similar onto gpus? sure you can do that.. it looks horrible, but you can do it. May get a bit hard to place an h100(i) for the cpu and 2 or 3 h50-80s for gpus in a case though. If I were running a single GPU I might consider it just because of cost but with multi GPU systems it just seems like a horrible idea.

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.

The Strix overclocks better than any of the 980s cause of the added extra phases, its up there with the classy atm. Things will change once the classy block comes out but the Strix is a very good 980 for overclocking with volt mod.

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.

AIO vs Custom loops For my part, a closed loop unit has limitations. You can't add or remove extra rads, or anything else to it. 2 overall temp. control, whereas the aio is what you see is what u get. They're ok, and you can add aftermarket fans to improve them a bit more, which I used to do. You can't add a chiler, a filter,... or anything else. I can add or remove an inline filter any time. When I change water the first thing I do is use the filter for an hr. Using quick connects, no water loss, no air in the system to purge,...I can take my cpu and gpu out without having to do anything more than top it up b4 re installing it to the loop. When benching I use an extra rad, just connect it inline to the other, click, click, done. Think of it this way, if you like working on ur car to increase performance, same thing. Some people r inclined to do more just for the love of the project or to try something new, and to c the end result. Cam, lifters, headers,... Rads, chillers, waterblocks for the mobo gpu cpu,...Less heat better overall performance without stressing too much from excess heat which allows you to get overall better performance. On my old system I could reduce the voltage required to overclock by 50mv. Doesn't seem like much , but when the chip runs overclocked at 1.3 vs 1.35 for example, it can run like that np all of the time with less stress, lower power draw. I had a few different aio coolers invcluding the Kraken, TD 02 and 03, H80i H105,....I can run my 3960 @ 5 ghz using the H80i with aftermarket fans. Dbl the air flow changing to higher cfms. There are arguments for both sides, it mostly depends on what u want to do, or how much u might enjoy doing ur own custom loop, money,... I've seen some pretty awesome looking loops, and some disasters. Most of the time a few minor changes need to be made and the loop is ok again. What surprises me the most is people not using quick connects in their loops. That alone saves countless hrs of purging, loss of water treatments, like anti corrosion,... I usually reuse the water to top it up b4 re installing. FF :) Edit: new system, 5660 evga ftw x99 kingston hyper x 2800 mhz 4x4gb quad channel EKWB gold, best I could find from multiple reviews, 2 Intel 530 SSDs in Raid 0, 120gb/ Corsair AX1200 WD1tb Black WD Raptor Drive, 500gb for backup. 2 480 rads with 4 107 cfm fans per rad, 1/2x3/4 lines and fittings, D5 Vario pump with the 140 mm reservoir though I should go a bit bigger for better cooling.