EK Water Blocks ASRock Z77 Full-Cover Water Cooler Review
Category : Watercooling
Published by Marc Büchel on 14.06.13
In the past few years the guys over at EK Water Blocks have been working really hard to bring custom watercooling blocks to the market as soon as new high end products launch. Actually they are the only company that offers a wide range of full cover water blocks for several motherboards and custom graphics cards. At this point we're going to have closer look at their ASRock Z77 full cover water block and we're going to show you guys what difference it can make.



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On the following pages we will show you what the EK's full-cover watercooler for the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 is capable of.

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Bundle and Specs



EK Water Blocks ship their full-cover water block for ASRocks Z77 Extreme11 motherboard perfectly packed. In the box they ship the cooler with, you find soft foam as well as different compartments. Like this they ensure that everything is a the right place and the cooler doens' get damaged during transportation. Not included in delivery are fittings. This is on purpose and EK leaves this descision to the customer. What you find in the box is all the different things you need to mount the cooler on the motherboard.

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ASRock Z77 Full-Cover Block



  


First of all we give a quick overview why it makes sense to build a watercooler for this board. Taking a closer look at the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 motherboard reveals that there are quite a few additional chips which generate heat. Next to the PCH there is a PLX PEX 8474 Lane-Splitter and an LSI SAS2308 controller. Both these Chips are able to get quite hot and when their under load the tiny, little fan on the PCH cooling block is going to spin at 6'000 rpm, while producing an annoying noise.

A closer look at the block itself shows that there EK has crafted it from electroly-copper as a material for the base-plates. In case of the covers you find POM Acetal. In between there are rubber gaskets which make sure, that nothing is leaking. Additionally you find washers as well as thermal pads in the delivery. To achieve better cooling results you should equip the LSI controller, the PLX chips as well as the current converters with thermal pads or non conductive thermal compound.

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Test Setup / Test Reults

Test Setup



  


Test Reults

Because of the fact that there is an SLI setup as well as two RAID's the additional chips - PEX 8747 and LSI SAS2308 - generate much more heat. As a result the chipset fan spins at way more than 6000 rpm after the system has booted.

  Motherboard Chipset
Aircooling 36 °C 54 °C
Watercooling 39 °C 43 °C


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Gallery

  


  


  


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Conclusion

With the ASR Z77 Extreme11, EK has a perfectly built and beautifully crafted motherboard watercooler in it's portfolio, which was purpose built for the ASRock Z77 Extreme 11 high-end motherboard. The build quality is definitely and simply perfect. For the installation process you should be aware that it takes some time, since upgrading or building a watercooling setup from scratch simply is more work than mounting a decent heatsink.

If we consider that before the installation of the ASR Z77 Extreme11 cooler the chipset fan was spinning at more than 6000 rpm, causing an annoying noise it is simply a blessing to this cooler is now in the loop. Obviously we could start a debate now and discuss about the sense of a watercooled motherboard, but since we're really not here to do that it's just a fact, that it's consequent to integrate the motherboard into the cooling loop if you already own a custom watercooling solution.