Closer Examination

We saw before how the Bitspower Touchaqua Summit MS OLED comes packed in a ziplock pouch, and taking it out gives us a good first look at this relatively massive CPU block that comes in at 95 x 95 mm in the square form factor. It is certainly the largest of any recent CPU block released that is not specifically designed for some of the large CPU sockets, and even then this would best most of them. Despite the size, it weighs less than the other two Bitspower CPU water blocks we checked out recently owing to the adoption of an acrylic top coupled to an OLED display and a thin metal top plate, compared to the full copper top in the Premium Summit M and a thicker metal cover with the Summit M w/OLED. The metal cover has a brushed silver finish with the Bitspower Touchaqua logo in the top-right corner, next to the hole for installation. The eye-catcher here is, no doubt, the relatively large OLED display at the bottom, and the entire construction makes this block look like the face of a robot in my opinion.


There are two BSP G1/4" threaded ports here, with arrows to indicate the preferred inlet and outlet directions. The ports are well threaded and spaced apart far enough to fit most large fittings easily. From the side, we see the acrylic top used for the integrated lighting to shine through, as well as the LED cable that terminates in a 3-pin 5 V connector that is plugged into compatible, addressable motherboard dRGB LED headers. This means you do not need a separate controller as an add-on purchase, which some brands, including CORSAIR, end up doing.

Flipping the block over, we see a plastic cover to help protect the cold plate during transit, which has a warning to remove it prior to installation. The cold plate is nickel-plated copper and has been given a mirror finish, but we also see that the actual contact area is smaller than the cold plate, which might well hurt thermal performance, especially on larger CPUs. There is a slight convex box here, which is expected of most CPU blocks from the past few years and onward, with the bow countering the flattening in the middle during installation and mating with the convex IHS on most Intel CPUs. We now also see the integrated mounting bracket with holes coinciding with those in the top for installation purposes.


As per usual, disassembly was done after all testing was complete, and the provided hex tool works well in removing the four screws on the bottom that hold the block together, including a screw that has a sticker on it, which will be a clear sign of disassembly having taken place. There are four large pieces that make up the Bitspower Premium Summit M block, including the top and cold plate we saw before. The top houses a flexible Bitspower-branded digital RGB LED strip that goes around a recess, with the LEDs shining inward as seen above. Do not attempt to power these LEDs off a 4-pin, 12 V LED header since it can kill the LEDs and/or the header. That having been said, doing so is also quite hard given the connector has a blocked-off middle pin anyway. We can also see the temperature sensor that juts inward far enough to touch the coolant as it goes through the ports; it outputs the measurement to the OLED display integrated into the block.

A translucent inner piece helps with the lighting, and is also a molded plastic piece that directs coolant flow through a jetplate slit and around via two channels for the way out. The cold plate has a rubber O-ring to ensure no coolant leaks, is ~2 mm thick, and has machined fins in a relatively small area of 28 x 26 mm, with the fin stack being ~2.5 mm tall. Most competitors have a higher number of thinner fins in a larger area, including the Summit M cold plate itself, but there is always a trade-off between coolant flow restriction and heat transfer, the latter of which also plateaus really quickly. So having more fins is not always a guarantee of better thermal performance.