Performance Summary

With CPU waterblocks, both thermal performance and liquid-flow restriction are important metrics. Unlike radiators where component liquid-flow restriction is not as big a factor in the loop's overall flow rate, the CPU block choice will impact average flow rate a lot and can thus not be ignored. In order to quantify relative performance for a CPU block thus, a normalized (% based) data set was created, with 70% weightage given to thermal performance and 30% weightage given to liquid-flow restriction. The data set created was thus plotted with the subject of this review at 100%.


Ah, this is where the larger gaps in flow restriction relative to thermal performance come into play. Despite the stellar thermal performance, the cuplex kryos NEXT is also a fairly restrictive block, and so it comes in at the middle of the chart here. The VARIO optimization does help this version get ahead of the other, but not by much.

Performance per Dollar

Prices were taken from Performance PCs in the USA when available, with all numbers reported in USD. For products not available there, the most obvious retail source was chosen, such as a manufacturer's web shop. For products no longer available, the last available reasonable price point was considered.


This is a misleading graph without context, and I will say that right off the bat. The cost of the cuplex kryos NEXT with the PVD coating and VARIO plus VISION features is a lot at $159.99, but the PVD coating and VISION features are a big part of it, which also do not really do anything to performance over the other version of the same block here. With that in mind, consider that the cost of the least expensive VARIO version is $108, which would have still netted it the worst spot anyway, but not by such a big margin. Diminishing returns with product cost indeed, as the base version of this very water block with the same design starts at $60 and would have fared much, much better here.