EK Supremacy EVO Review
EK's brand spanking new Supremacy EVO cpu water block is here and it's an evolution of the existing Supremacy design - what's new and how will it perform?
Full text write up:
http://www.xtremerigs.net/2014/08/27/...
EDIT- I've been surprised by the amount of negativity towards the block that this review has created. At the time of writing there were no other reviews to compare to, nor did I have time to test other CPUs like the 4930K. Since the NDA lifted there are also reviews that show the block in a more positive light. Some of those reviews are of high quality (moonman's for example is as far as I can tell very high quality) while some of the reviews should just be ignored as poorly thought out and performed. The reader has to remember that there is variation in the CPU IHS flatness and power density across parts and test methods, and even more across SKUs. In addition there is the differences due to TIM used and slight variation in the block due to manufacturing tolerances also. Just because this block happened to be slightly worse on average for this CPU doesn't mean that every block on every CPU will be worse. This doesn't mean that the test data is flawed, just simply that there is a limitation in time. To thoroughly evaluate a CPU block you would have to run multiple CPUs of every type with multiple versions of each block and multiple types of TIM, with enough mounts of each. Even then all you'd find out is that there is quite a wide spread of possible results. This is why I'm a fan of the confidence interval plot - when you look at that you see just how much overlap the blocks have in the possibility of their performance and that's only 95% confidence and only for this one sample of each block and CPU. In summary no reviewer has the time, money, energy or will to be able to do as "good" a review as we would like to. 5 mounts per block is really a minimum to show broad trends on one cpu. A reader therefore is always wise to not only consult multiple reviews and see which might correspond best to their setup but also to learn what differentiates a quality review from a poor one while knowing that no one review will perfectly match their own setup. As the great tester Martin of martinsliquidlab once said "anything with 1C should be considered the same". So is it a great step forward in peformance - no. Is it an evolution of the design and is it still very good - absolutely yes.