Introduction

When PC DIY watercooling started out, everyone was adapting automobile watercooling to PCs - aluminum was the metal of choice, and there was no real standard for years. It was then that people put serious thought into the design of waterblocks and radiators and switched to copper to achieve significant improvements in cooling and heat dissipation. Things started saturating out after that, and EK Water Blocks (or EKWB as shall be referred to henceforth) was no exception. What do you do when you are the biggest brand in a very specific business where innovation is hard to come by and tangible gains are even harder to find? With heat sources in the PC DIY industry getting more and more efficient, PC DIY watercooling is getting all the more niche of a market, and it does not help that a CPU waterblock from five years ago is still within error margins in a lot of published tests. EKWB thinks it is time to use the knowledge and expertise gained in the last decade to go back to where it all started - aluminum.

Yes, there are aluminum blocks and radiators available for purchase from unknown brands and sellers on eBay, Taobao and the lot. I had actually purchased one last year out of curiosity and ended up discarding it after it came with no installation hardware, a poorly translated manual, and no help from the seller. Closed loop coolers (CLCs) involve either getting one for your CPU and GPU each or picking an expandable option, which is not really recommendable due to the use of mixed metals and an environmentally unfriendly coolant to delay galvanic corrosion accordingly. An all-aluminum loop as a well-thought-out kit with 2017 design and manufacturing does as such have the scope to introduce a whole new audience to DIY watercooling, those who want the benefits and the coolness factor of watercooling a computer, but at a lower cost of entry. Thanks a lot to EKWB for providing a review sample for testing.


EKWB has three kits under their new Fluid Gaming line - the A120, A240 and A240G - with the differences being the size of the radiator (single 120 mm or dual 120, aka 240 mm) and whether a GPU waterblock is included. Today, we take a look at the Fluid Gaming A240G kit, which comes with all you need to cool a CPU and an Nvidia 10-series GPU (GTX 1070, GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti, Titan X Pascal, or Titan Xp). Given the nature of this kit, there will be a lot of things to cover, and I encourage you to read through the whole article if you have the time.