THIS is what I am replacing EKWB with in my personal rig!

So with everything going on regarding EK and more behind the scenes stuff coming out, I made a tweet saying that I'm going to go ahead and remove all EK material from Skunk Works. I feel weird leaving those parts there. So the system is still here after I did the cleaning which sucks because I have to take it all apart again because we are going to change all the EK products and the things I'm changing them with are here in these boxes fun fact the new blocks of water that I'm going to use are made by a US based company which is super weird on its own Hello day d d

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do we have work to do yes I'm playing World of Warships World of Warships is the free naval strategy game in which you command the most iconic and famous warships of the First and Second World Wars, recreated with astonishing detail and precision, build your fleet while participating in various types of games and upgrade your ship's arsenal throughout the course of the game.

Way, new players who sign up using my link below will receive an exclusive starter pack so they can get up and running quickly by receiving 7 days of premium time 1 million 300 credits for flowers and the tier five premium ship, the exitor So

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are you waiting for? Start sinking world warships by heading the description below and getting your freebies, so I'm going to leave that aside for a second, so do me a favor if you're interested in computer parts, like computer mods. air cooling and water cooling. No matter Uh, custom sleeved cables, parts power coding or whatever, head over to performance-pcs.com.

I'll put a link below. They are the ones supporting my pieces for

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and I think that would be huge. To go and support them like I mentioned in other videos, they've been instrumental in me being able to do these builds often, when it comes to custom water cooling, and they really are like your one stop shop for all that stuff. of things, so anyway these are my accessories, they're actually from Barrow um Barrow is a brand that's come out in the last few years, we'll take a look at them in a second, they're Chinese made, but they're a lot. less expensive than, say, using similar power bits or something.

My biggest problem with similar bit power accessories is the fact that they are very expensive and also have the stupid golden Golden Dragon emblem and when you put them all in your system you have golden dragons everywhere and I don't want golden dragons, that It's a big radiator right there, if you ask me, it's a black ice Nemesis 560 GTS crossflow. We'll talk about crossflow in a second. my first time doing cross flow RADS at Skunk Works uh, I think it's actually going to help quite a bit. I don't know why I have a xer 280. I know I thought I only put one in my cart, maybe I made two.

I apologize. Hank, maybe I'll send you one. Let's talk about crossflow for a second. Cross flow is kind of unique because most of the time, actually, cross flow is like what you would have in your car, to be honest, everything goes in. on one side all the fluid goes through the rad and comes out the other side, it's not a U flow. The U flow was where the PCHs are on the same side, it comes in halfway, the radiator comes out, the tank Go back and go down the other half of the radiator. and backing up the same side I thought cross flow would be fun because there is less pressure drop across the radiator when you have cross flow two because the flow actually slows down going through the radiator because all those rows lead to a larger surface area The inner diameter of the tube will spend more time in the radiator providing decent cooling.

It's negligible to be honest, but the real reason is the fact that I needed my tube to be able to reach the other side of the box from the front anyway. back, why not let the radiator be the tube? I think it will be a cleaner operation that way. It's kind of a complaint. We'll talk about

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right now with Horard Labs and the black stuff, they only go from 30k to 54k. There needs to be something in the middle and the 54 is too thick for the top and doesn't get in the way of things anyway, they are very cool looking radiators, that's a big radiator right there so you can see what I'm getting at.

I mean, how is the accessory on one side? The end tank even tapers to promote smooth airflow or airflow, water flow. Fluid air will flow the same way, but it promotes a smoother transition into those rows instead of like a Sharp 90 here at the bottom and then the same thing. when it comes out it tapers back to the connector so you can see how the connector is on opposite ends and goes in one side and comes out the other so this is going to be quite convenient for me. Honestly, no To be honest, I don't even think I need the 280 crossflow, but it's Skunk Works.

Skunk Works has always been Overkill and that's what we're going to do, so the 480, as you can see in the picture, is not a cross flow that I made. That's on purpose because I don't want the ports on the other side above where my tanks are, so those are my RADS, they're pretty cool, I say so myself, the accessories, you know, it sucks because I really like the look. of the EK torsion fittings I have there, but anyway there's nothing really exciting to talk about here other than the fact that they are fittings, they're matte black instead of silver, so I'm actually darkening this build a bit.

Plus, I haven't decided if I'm going to use the matte clear tube like I have now or if I want to use the black tube, either way it turns all black. These are pretty cute so I had to make them. Do the twists too because I have twist offsets in there to line things up so this is just D those O rings are tight which is good so here I have a variety of 90 and twists in terms of compressions although I'm I'm just reusing a bunch of new 14mm rigid compression fittings I have from Corsair, they look exactly like this, they might even be the same odm because I know the bits boost the odms for um Corsair.

I don't know if maybe borrow odums for the power bits. or vice versa, they look identical, it could be something like that that happens in China. I don't really know who does what, but they are doing the job. It just sucks because I like the look of satin silver. They call them titanium. EK accessories I currently have, but none of the other brands really produce that color. I guess Primo chill does, but I just couldn't find what I wanted on the Primo chill site, so this is what I chose in terms of the drains because I have to change them too, I'm literally changing everything EK, just pull him to open it, it's one of those slide check valves, so now it's set on which means I think it would be out of flow and if I push it right, so back, inside is off, outside is on, but that It leaves me now with the CPU and GPU block I chose from a company called Optimus.

Now Optimus is based in Chicago. These blocks were sent to me so I could have them. Take a look at um so I want to point out that right now, full transparency, they shipped these for this build. I didn't pay for these, um, but the fact, like I said, that they're made in the USA, they're aerospace engineered. Machinists used to work on machines like aerospace engineering or something, so the machinery they use has extremely tight tolerances, apparently this will be manufactured to tighter specifications than almost anything on the market because they're bringing all that stuff in like space. kind of engineering design for PC cooling, that's where it comes from, which I thought okay, that sounds really cool.

Phil and I like space so we might as well see what those guys come up with, so this is the first time I've taken a look at something. by Optimus I've heard of them before, but I didn't know, I didn't realize that they were based on us, so I'm kind of excited about that right now, but everything is also made in Chicago, so we're opening this. together for the first time, oh my gosh, they're heavy, all I'm going to say is why I have the scale here because I want to know what these things are like.

This is an exclusive V3 CPU block for Intel, it has a black nickel finish. carbon plate they are ceramic coated the water just bounces off they are not powder coated or painted they are ceramic coated uh Hello Optimus sticker or love stickers uh let's talk about the price real quick, we'll get it out of the way The GPU block is $ 400 which is as much as EK's stuff to be honest, however EK's stuff was being mass produced in China and this is being produced here in the US so they could even keep the price down equal. like what EK was, what was supposed to be better tolerances and better build quality, many made in the US is already somewhat surprising, the CPU is $269 so they aren't necessarily cheaper but they should be higher quality, let's start with the CPU and I'm going to knock down the blocks as well because I want to take a look inside because they talk about some of their design concepts that I want to see in practice.

I opened it upside down, okay, here we go, gangster, recognize Gangsta, whoops! They use kpx as thermal paste and said their own website is the best thermal paste they have

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ly used. I agree with that statement, that's why I have a bunch of giant tubes, so here we go. It's the ceramic that I put on my gloves because I want fingerprints everywhere. This is the CED V3 ceramic block for Intel. They also have this for AMD. The x99 Ripper thread from the x299 server. I think even some server stuff, but yeah, so just. It looks amazing, do you realize what RGB isn't here either?

For the first time in the history of Skunk's work, I put components there, well actually not the first time in history, the first iteration didn't have RGB either, it was before everything RGB. Shit really started, so this is just a clean block aesthetic I wanted to stick with. We've seen a lot of nickel in the past that was very pitted or wavy, that's crazy. I also want to weigh this up real quick because I'm really curious to know how much this weighs because it's very heavy, so it weighs 1 pound 15.5 oz, so almost 2 pounds 892 G. If we put the hardware in there, you'll notice that there is no springs to mount it so I'm I have to look at the manual because you know what else I don't see here it's like oh there's the back plate retention is there Dam even that thing weighs 970 and then we put all the hardware in there. 984 G for the entire block assembly, including the back plate, even the back plates, like it has I don't know if you can see it in the lighting, but it even has your name engraved on there, those screws, like the quality of everything that I think I'll bet you anything they machine and turn their own screws, that's really basic, it's just a jet plate, an O-ring, a big fat cap and then, uh, nut sleeves in there, obviously, actually No, that's it, I think it's brass.

The top part looks like it is made of brass and that is ma. You're seeing the cut threads there that are also very, very clean and then obviously this goes down here like through the entrance it splits the flow and then comes back on the other side, look how nice. those mic channels, I have a legitimate concern right now about the coolant I use to make sure it doesn't clog them, to be honest, okay, here's the GPU block, so it's going to look basically the same as the CP block in terms of your Yeah, you also have a protective cover on there right now for Plexi um, okay, it includes the thermal paste and the spatula again, the kpx front pads, uh, Fuji poly gr45.

If you're wondering exactly what brand they are, I'm glad. I'm glad they told you that because you could replace them if you needed a Fuji pg25 3mm 1.5 uh hex T8 0.5mm poly back pad and 8 mil plugs and G qu. Look, they even show you where the heating pads should go. and stuff, this is a pretty sick little manual, so this is the main block here again. The machining quality on this is sick. I love that everything is ceramic coated too. um, you can see, I'm not going to use vertical mounts. I can see there but there is one thing about this that got me really excited and a lot of brands don't do this, they even say it has double o-rings, what does that mean?

It means that you have the O-ring around the perimeter and it has an O-ring inside between the channels so that there is no fluid that goes over the cold plate and jumps over what they call the bridge, which is like the bridge. Machining there, but to make the channels, anyone who has had a water block that looks through it, you can see that the coolant has started to smear in the middle because the coolant, when you only have metal and Plexi or what let it be in contact, there is a gap, there will be a gap and part of it makes its way through there, so the O-ring I'm not going to take it apart because I don't really want to try to put the O-ring back in there.

TheO-ring makes sure everything stays exactly where it needs to be, so this has an inlet and outlet by the way, this is the inlet here because you can see it goes down through the jet plate and then out both sides of the jet plate and it hits all the vrms and the RAM and then it comes out here like it's back out there, so let's talk about the backplate because it also has a backplate, geez, it's all a thermal pad. Wow, the entire back of the card is being sunk by an actual heatsink, okay, the weight. of this little piece of mesh protecting the thermal pad is negligible, but it's 474G for the backplate alone or 1.7 Oz for the backplate alone if we go ahead and add our GPU to that GPU block which is now 69 Oz 4 lb 5. 8 or 1 kgr 980 G is crazy oh for the love of god are they actually pre-cut?they are actually pre-cut something EK could never do.

They are pre-cut, that alone is worth the $400. Okay, maybe not, but they give you a key. They weren't joking. There is the Allen wrench that will be for the plugs. Most likely there are the other screws and mounting screws that go all the way through with the Allen or Torx wrench that go with that and then here, damn, these are some beefy plugs, holy cow, look at these little locking plugs, the quality of those solos, okay. That's all I need to talk about today. I'm really excited to use these parts to be honest, I was a bit of a man because they didn't have RGB.

I'm quickly overlooking that I have a lot of other lights on right now. my system, I'm also going to change my fans, to be honest the quiet fans have been awesome but my biggest problem with daisy chaining is the fact that each fan can't do anything independent of the other and I like it. when I had those fans in Black Ice I was able to create like a marquee lighting effect that ran through the entire system and then have my uh if I go with the Le lean Le uni fans again due to the fact that they are square designs.

It really goes well with the square aesthetic, the circles. I thought it was okay with the contrast, but the more I look at it, the more I think it will be cool to have that lighting effect that can continue through the PC and then the square RGB. along with that and then I may or may not add even some of the similar height RGB stuff that we recently reviewed or took a look at to add lighting to my system if I really want to have more, but I think they're like Dark is OK with everyone the black fittings now and if I even use black tubes and these black ones, I could have a fun contrast there with this build, but the silver and white tubes could make them darker because it's all black interior. already and with the gray um bronze on the outside I think I might have to stick with that okay guys it's stuck okay we're good that's Optimus uh lock this is what made its way into my system and I think it's unfortunate that things had to turn out the way they did and everything fell apart, you know, that's not right, right?

Oh yeah, it's just that everything had to fall apart around EK the way it did, but it sucks. I'm happy to see this product, although I think it will perform well based on its own claims, but obviously once it's together we'll have to see how well those claims hold up, but in terms of build quality I've already done that

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ly. I haven't seen anything that comes close to this level of build quality, even EK ek quality has been declining over the last few years like it's been finding a big time. I think the only thing that comes close to this quality was actually like the Aqua computer, but Aqua.

The computer was actually more expensive than these things on average, so there you have it guys, you can check out Optimus. I'll put a link in the description below. They have more than just blocks, they also have some really sick warehouses that I would have gone to. If I didn't already have the ones that I built, that whole system to um, which also had that very clean aesthetic with the reservoir tube or the tube, the reservoir and the pump integration, it looks really great guys, thanks for looking and as always see you next time and this is backwards