The Original Round-Up:



In the beginning there were just five waterblocks to be included in our Round-Up. That number grew to six when we added the D-Tek Fuzion. It also made for some un-happy competitors since the Fuzion dominated the Round-up. Today we offer some competition to the Fuzion a la the EK Supreme Plexi and introduce Koolance replacement for their CPU-330 the CPU-340. To deepen the bench so to speak, I've also decided to introduce a water-block many H20-Enthusiats have held in high esteem.



Swiftech purchased the rights to manufacture the venerable Storm waterblock almost 3-years ago CIRCA July 2005. When it hit the E-Shelves it had been long anticipated, so long in fact by the time the 2nd revision arrived the block was seeing some close competition ironically from the company whom had been manufacturing it. The Storm was replaced by the Apogee last year. Although discontinued I thought it still deserved a spot if anything as a frame of reference for the Round-Up. Despite its age the block is still a great performer. Below we see the Storm disassembled.



What made the Storm a success were its mini-jets / mini-cup impingement design. Seen below, the Storm is a multistage affair with the center section dividing the 1/2" inlet steam via 35-miniature nozzles into individual jets.



As the 1/2" stream is divided via the nozzles water pressure increases substantially into 35-individual jets where they impinge into a corresponding "cup" in the copper base. These 35-cups are grouped above the processor core and machined into the copper base leaving just a few mm of copper between the water and processor IHS. The nozzle length places each nozzle tip about a tenth of an mm into the cup. Counter-sinking the nozzles eliminates back pressure from disrupting the flow hence impingement is unimpeded.



As a result of the multiple mini-jets design, the Storm places more back pressure on an H20 system compared to most other water-blocks. For this reason the Storm not only benefits from a high pressure (high Head Feet) pump, it's dependent upon high pressure to function optimally. The Laing D5-38 Vario I've been using throughout these tests (also sold as the Swiftech MCP655) is an ideal match for the Swiftech Storm. Below we see the individual streams created by the mini-jets.



Onto the new additions ->