As an engineer and materials scientist by trade, most things about the Optimus Foundation tickle me in all the right ways. So keep in mind that my thoughts may be influenced somewhat by all the small things the company has incorporated here, including the cast acrylic top, CNC milled ports, and fittings with diamond bits rated to specification, high quality materials throughout to where the company is confident this CPU block will work well with most tap water even, their overengineered cold plate with extremely thin microfins, and channels that are CNC machined again, as well as the spring-less installation which provides for excellent thermal performance if done correctly. The company leverages a combined total of a few decades of experience in various engineering fields to come up with a CPU block that is something patriots of the USA can be proud of and the rest of the world should be interested in.

At the same time, the company had an easy time with users doing most of the marketing for them to where they carefully do not say anything about their own performance results and instead tout threads on forums where users report 5–6 °C improvements over some other fantastic blocks with varying degrees of scientific testing having been done. Some of this no doubt comes down to the CPU platform and heat output to be cooled, with perhaps AMD Ryzen CPUs showing a bigger difference, which I am unfortunately unable to test due to the lack of AMD hardware. But I found less than a single °C improvement on the Intel Core i9-9900K relative to the next best performer, which is an equally new CPU block, but with a metal top! Testing the older installation method confirmed that the cooling engine works in symbiosis with the newer installation method, which is finicky to get right to achieve said results, so keep that in mind.

There is so much going on here that talking about the block in a mere three paragraphs does not really do it justice. I do highly encourage going through the entire review and checking out the review of their higher-end Signature V2 block, as both are a good representation of this startup company as a whole, and pricing is a stark reminder that you will be paying for all of this too.