Conclusion
Yes, current graphics cards and also matching water blocks are more than rare right now. It’s not for nothing that I deliberately chose the title of today’s article. But still, the world keeps turning, new products appear and we as journalists and testers have to do our job and present relevant findings and recommendations – even if this probably has less direct added value than ever for most users.
But if you can get your hands on such a card, be it with F5 skills or otherwise, and are looking for a suitable water block, you can grab the Alphacool Aurora GPX-N ice block with a clear conscience, even with the Founders Edition variant for the RTX 3090. In fact, given the current market value of the card and the resulting benefits in temperature, noise emissions, and performance, converting to a water block at this price is almost reasonable.
And I don’t mean that in a negative way at all, because watercooling, especially custom, is traditionally relatively unreasonable. But 5% clock gain for 6% of the purchase price of the card in this day and is really a reasonable gain for the Eisblock GPX-N. Temperature headroom and potential for further performance gains, e.g. through higher possible memory clock come on top.
By the way, this is how the whole thing looks when installed in the system. The loop isn’t really pretty (yet), but the system is now inaudible and no longer disturbs the audio backdrop while gaming, which was actually the main reason for the conversion. Of course, the water block can also light up its RGB and together with the other system components generate a colorful image. Personally, I prefer understatement and as little lighting as possible, but of course I wanted to show it off in any case.
Next up, as I said, is shunt modding, which means I’ll have to disassemble the loop again anyway. And after that we will see if the Corsair HX850i PSU can handle the spikes and load peaks of the unleashed i9-10900KF CPU and RTX 3090 GPU or if the next upgrade is already on the way. Accordingly, I will then also replace the 12-pin adapter à la trolley train.
But until then, feel free to leave me feedback on the loop and what you might change about the tubing of the components. Here I haven’t really figured out how to arrange it in the cleanest way. You have surely also noticed that I have taken a new approach to the product images today, so feel free to add some mustard in the forum here. I look forward to your input! 😉
Waterblock and temperature sensors were provided by Alphacool without any obligation or requirement to publish. Moreover, no influence on the tests and their results was exerted.
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