Up Close and Personal

Taking a closer look at the block it is clear that that this is quite substantial in its construction. It is machine milled out of solid copper and sports a 1/4 CNC-machined acrylic top plate with the Danger Den logo. As you can see, the printed Danger Den logo is reflected on the highly polished copper beneath the acrylic top plate.

Taking a look at the underside of the assembled block we can see that there is a large, approximately 4mm thick plate for cooling the backside RAM chips. The plate is not just strips of metal, but is corrugated and looks pretty stylish as well as offering complete coverage for the memory. Also of note is the cardboard insert between the two pieces of the waterblock, which so happens to be of equal thickness to the PCB. This protects the copper contact surfaces from any marks or scratches after the block is manufactured. Simple but effective.


Here we see the exploded assembly instructions that came with the waterblock. Even though it is simply in black and white and not colour like the 1900 Tyee block, it is easy to understand once studied for a short while. It states which rubber washer and screw goes where, as well as which screw holes on the graphics card they are meant to go through.


Here I have separated the two parts of the waterblock, the top and back plate It is obvious that it is very well lapped, although not to a mirror finish, it is nevertheless very good. The camera picks up finer scratches from the lapping, but to the human eye I cannot see a single scratch. All of the contact areas, the RAM plates and the GPU area are very smooth, and looks to be an impressive job on the milling machine. I was told by Dan that it took over 90 minutes of machining to create these blocks, and the effort has obviously paid off from the initial looks.

Looking at the underside of the backplate one can easily see how well lapped it is, even though the camera picks up on scratches almost invisible to the human eye. When looking at it in any sort of light the copper work is dazzling, very shiny and looks absolutely great.