Closer Examination

As touched on earlier, the Bykski CPU-XPR-C-I water block goes for a clear acrylic top and a nickel-plated copper cold plate. While the latter is shared by the other SKUs, you can get this block with a black acetal (POM) or plated brass top too. I suspect the acrylic top version will end up being the most popular though, especially since people love to see coolant flowing through the block as well as have it be lit up by the integrated RGB LEDs used here. The design is fairly typical of most such Intel platform blocks and thus also comes with the Intel mounting bracket pre-installed. Interestingly, Bykski has not added any diffuser to help spread out the light from the LEDs more evenly, perhaps this is a deliberate choice, or maybe it is to help keep costs low. Either way, the acrylic top is machined well and given a good polish too. In the bottom left corner, as seen from the front in the default orientation, is the Bykski logo applied as a sticker. There are two BSP G1/4" threaded ports, with the one nearest to the logo being the desired inlet port given how it feeds directly to the jetplate underneath. One of the corners has a section removed at the bottom allowing for the LED cable to exit. This can help hide the cable more easily in a lot of builds, although really it depends on where the LED header is placed. For those curious, the block takes up 92 x 23 x 1.8 mm of space.


Turning the block around, we see a protective sticker placed over the nickel-plated copper cold plate. There is no pre-applied thermal paste as with the likes of Corsair, so I hope you already have a tube of your preferred TIM lying around. The cold plate has a slight convex shape to it which flattens out during installation, courtesy applied pressure at the corners. It is machined well although not polished as with a few other blocks we have seen before—this does not matter for the actual performance of the block either way.


Disassembly was done after testing was completed and here we can simply unscrew the four hex 2.5 mm screws securing the cold plate—keep in mind that two of them have tell-tale stickers on top which will show you have disassembled the block, and doing so may end up voiding warranty. The three main parts of the block—the acrylic top, the metal mounting bracket in black, and the cold plate—are now fully separated for closer examination. We can also now remove the triangular jetplate which has a similarly shaped O-ring underneath, in addition to a larger one around the entire cooling engine to ensure the coolant flows only where it should. The stainless steel jetplate is 0.5 mm thick and the cold plate itself is thicker than average at 5.4 mm. The fins occupy an area of 34.9 x 31.6 mm, are 500 µm thick with the same distance between them for the coolant to flow through the microchannels. This is a relatively simple cold plate thus with thicker fins than more recent, high-performance blocks that also have the fins occupy more space to increase the active heat transfer surface area. I expect to see coolant flow restriction to be lower than the norm, but perhaps at the cost of performance.