Birthday Build – Water Block, no plunger required

Now that we have a thingy(tm) to push the water into the thingy(tm) that cools the water down, we obviously need something that connects to the thingy(tm) that we are trying to cool down. Otherwise, what’s the point? We’ll eventually have something to attach this thingy(tm) to that actually needs cooling, but that’s quite a few posts from now.

This particular thingy(tm) is also known by it’s far less technical name, Water Block. The idea behind a water block is to attach as directly as possible to the CPU(or other heat producing component). It also needs to be engineered to allow as much heat transfer as fast as possible. Water is then blasted into it to carry that heat away as fast as possible. It acts as sort of a heat sponge, only made of very heavy/dense copper. Copper is kind of the Bounty super picker upper of heat. At least, in a metal that we can actually afford.

Choosing a water block doesn’t really have all of the other issues discussed so far. It’s stuff like;

1. Does it fit on my motherboard?
2. Does it work with my CPU?
3. Does it support the fittings I want to use?

Pretty trivial stuff. So, it was fairly simple to find a “really good” water block that met my requirements.

Meet the Apogee XT

If you click the picture and pull up the one on the web and zoom in, you will see the hole in the middle and the one that’s just a little up and to the right of it. That’s where you screw in the plugs that the hoses connect to.

This is the bottom part. The copper sits on top of the CPU. The black bracket is secured to the mother board and clamped down to keep the block in firm contact with the CPU.