EK Alternatives for custom loop.

[Arya]

A few days ago I attempted my first Custom Loop, using parts drawn from EK's product catalogue. A Supremacy EVO heatsinbk with a DDC Elite pump/reservoir and in-house soft tubing. And it was a fiasco, the pump arrived with a defective gasket and sprayed coolant everywhere. The Radiator wasn't much better, the screwholes were way out of spec. A few were bad enough that I had to drill them out myself and use a larger screw.

Needless to say I'm completely finished with EK. Nothing will restore my trust or respect after this. But I'm still curious about Liquid Cooling, and now looking for an alternative brand with better build quality. Who would you recommend? I don't mind buying expensive parts, so long as they match spec and arrive intact.

[igloosfolly]

I was under the assumption that Ek has the best stuff out there maybe you just got a bad one.

[Arya]

Originally posted by igloosfolly:

I was under the assumption that Ek has the best stuff out there maybe you just got a bad one.

I was under the same impression, but once I started unboxing parts I very disappointed with the build quality, especially the radiator. The radiator was just terrible, it looked like it'd been assembled by Baboons.

Another problem, was that some of the parts that EK claimed were included were not included. The Pump was supposed to ship with a mounting bracket, and I paid extra for that. No bracket was shipped.

[Kaihekoa]

I'll be sticking with good ol' Noctua for CPU cooling and Arctic for DIY VGA cooling, but EK and Swiftech are well regarded by other water enthusiasts. Not worth the risk unless you're getting into serious hardware imo.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Build it... use www.FrozenCPU.com

[Acid]

I dislike EK for some of the things they've done and the hassle they've caused me. I always use Koolance and AquaComputer gear but usually have to import the Koolance watercooling gear. Many leaks come from rotaries or angled fittings. I have not heard of a pump, res and top exploding like that.

[Mossy Snake]

Bitspower is good I hear

[Monk]

One of my ek GPU blocks was missing thermal pads, but they fixed that in a few days, other than that they seem good, but for other parts, I use alphacool radiators with primochill Res / pump and barrow fittings, and EK for the blocks, phantek is making parts now and bitspower makes everything but are crazy expensive.
Xspc are another option, or to go very fancy you have the singularity computers parts, which might be a bit cheaper for you than others as they are Australian.

On a small plus, you learned why people leak test lol

Primochill has one nice advantage that they do their parts in about a dozen colours.

[rotNdude]

When I built my custom CPU water cooling in 2004 for a Pentium 4 that I wanted to heavily overclock, I used flexible 3/4"OD 1/2"ID tygon tubing, barb connections with stainless steel clamps, a t-line rather than a reservoir, a 240 mm radiator, a large lian-li full tower case, a Laing pump similar to this[www.frozencpu.com], two bottles of PCIce blue colored coolant, two Delta fans, a custom CP water block with barb fittings, a fill port like this[www.frozencpu.com], and a T-connector with 1/2' barb fittings.

When I upgraded the CPU to a QX6700, I bought a new water block to replace the Pentium 4 block due to the socket change. All I did was remove the old CPU block and put the new block into the existing loop.

Fast forward to today. I replaced the CPU water block again because I'm now using an i5-3570K. The pump, radiator, tubing, clamps, case and fill port are still the original from 14 years ago.

[igloosfolly]

Danger Den had one of the best radiators but they closed shop. Thier stuff was never cheap i think the AIO hundred dollar kit killed em.

[Rem4rk4ble]

didnt have any issues with my build, perhaps you got a lemon?

[Monk]

Yeah he got bad luck, but I understand feeling off about a company after such a thing, not sure why he needed it professionally cleaned tough, a bit of water or slchahol with plenty of time to dry is all it needed.
The performance between the various brands is barely outside of margin of error to be honest.

But hey atleast you now have a decent list of alternatives :)
If primochill has their blocks out soon, I feel a full primochill build would look cool with radiators / blocks / Res / pumps and fittings all colour coded to match.

[John Doe]

Over the years EK have missed the mark with many things. The nickel plating and the CSQ fiasco, Predator rev 1.0 leaking and destroying machines and pump failures...

when my Predator came, it smelled like absolute crap and recently the pump stopped working using SATA power. I had to cut the worst zip ties I ever cut and even cut one of the fan's cable by mistake (that's a Vardar fan BTW...). Then connected the pump cable directly to mobo and it started working back. Luckily, I bought some Vardars on the cheap like $20 for 3 from some guy, and used one of those in the place of the one I cut the cable of. Taking that fan out was a PITA too.

Afterwards, while inspecting my EK FC nickel 1080 Ti block, I noticed that it had a tiny bit of oxidation inside. Not too much to be worried about, but still. Another thing was the block's absolute junk acetal top that was held by two tiny plastic screws. I pushed it a bit and the top literally bent.

I'd suggest Aquacomputer products, they cost more but their quality is top notch. I've had two Aqualis reservoirs, a Modularity unit, a Cuplex CPU block and a 1080 Ti block from them, and they were all constructed with perfect German craftsmanship.

[Monk]

odd my 1080ti blocks were solid as anything, also, the nickel plating cannot be responsible for oxidisation, that would soley come from some contaminent (that is the same for any nikel plating), you probably have a tiny bit of algae growththe same as i do as i ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up refilling my loop.

As for it beign held by 2 tiny pladtic screws ? mine has quite a few holding it down like a damn vice.

the biggest issue with using otgher companies blocks is, very few offer more than reference board blocks, while ek tends to cover most of the top custom boards.

right now, i feel that the phantek gpu blocks look fantastic, but i would reall6 liek to see primochills offerings, having colour matched gpu / cpu / rads and reservoirs along with fiottings would lead to some really cool builds.