Introduction

XSPC started over 13 years ago as a British company involved in custom watercooling for the PC, and has hence increased their relationships with manufacturers in Asia to offer a wide range of products that compete with the bigger names in terms of product quality, but often at a lower cost. In order not to just be the budget brand, but also offer flagship-tier products, XSPC worked on the RayStorm Pro in 2015, a full copper top and cold plate CPU block at the $65 price point. This in turn caused others to reciprocate, and I suppose we have to thank them for it. Seeing as the market has a strong preference for acrylic/plexi top products, XSPC has recently worked on a new design for all their water blocks, and today, we take a look at the new RayStorm Neo. Thanks again to XSPC for providing a review sample for us to examine in more detail.


The RayStorm Neo is based off the older RayStorm Pro (a review of which can be found here), and we can see that it retains the XSPC ID with the metal mounting bracket that is placed over the actual water block that is a lot smaller in area. Instead of a copper top, we have an acrylic top with a polish to be able to view not just the copper cold plate underneath but the coolant in use, as seen in the image above. Secondly, the bracket is also changed from the powder-coated aluminum with a matte finish to a glossy chrome or black chrome plating instead. This is all about the bling, and XSPC bundles in RGB LEDs and a controller too because why not? As a result of the bracket's finish, the RayStorm Neo is available for purchase not only as an Intel or AMD option (and there is a separate AMD TR4 version as well), but also in chrome or black chrome, which leaves you with a multitude of options to choose from. I have here the Intel version with a black chrome bracket; let us begin the review with the specifications table below.

Specifications