So here I was, just having tested the two Optimus Cooling CPU blocks and figuring out how a company is able to sell a CPU block at ~$200, which is hefty for even a made in the USA product of pretty nifty quality, and then EK came along. Since I first saw the EK-Quantum Magnitude at Computex 2019, I was curious about the extent of modularity on offer, as well as the pricing. Both are answered now, and I definitely had sticker shock after realizing that the block I had just tested was going to retail for a whopping $270, with the rest of the family starting at $210. EK says the Magnitude is not intended to replace the EK-Velocity at all and meant to be a luxury alternative with performance, design, and customization in mind, which is a given now with the pricing disparity.

I appreciate that the company has a lot of things in play here which contribute to the pricing, but purely in terms of materials used, it is still hard to justify. Waterblocks from Watercool and Bitspower offer full copper construction for a lot less, and there is Aqua Computer with a PVD coating, an OLED display, and a VARIO feature for about two thirds of the price. In defense of the EK-Quantum Magnitude, the Watercool Heatkiller IV Pro and the Aqua Computer cuplex kryos NEXT are long in the tooth now with minimal retail channel stock for most variants, no RGB support, and no optimization for Ryzen necessarily, let alone an ultra-flat cold plate similar to the Optimus. The Bitspower Premium Summit M is the closest to this specific block and has RGB side lighting and higher socket compatibility but slightly worse performance. The offerings from the more mainstream companies—think CORSAIR and Thermaltake—are targeting a more budget-oriented market and come in at a third of the cost.

I appreciate the modular nature and tweaking to just about every part here and would love to recommend this CPU block to people if it weren't priced as high. But I still think it will sell well if the near-immediately sold out EK-Supremacy EVO 10th anniversary edition or EK-Supremacy Edge special editions are anything to go by, and also the past couple of days during which the EK-Quantum Magnitude blocks were prematurely listed and made available for sale temporarily before they noticed. It depends on whether EK markets this as a low volume item in limited editions. Even offering replacement inserts and jet plates for those wanting to swap CPUs and not needing to buy a whole new block again would go a long way in ensuring a long use case for the block and, in turn, a longer time to amortize the purchase cost. The design is clearly popular enough already, having won an iF 2020 design award as well, so I am just as curious about what you think. Personally, I appreciate the engineering here even more than on the Optimus blocks, with a lot of time spent on making socket-specific tuned parts, from the lathe-turned base cold plate to the asymmetric insert for AMD Ryzen, for the various Intel and AMD CPUs today. But for the general market as a whole, I am unable to recommend the EK-Quantum Magnitude because of the price point it demands.