- Joined
- Jul 10, 2005
- Location
- Ellicott City, MD
Never seen this before http://www.xoxide.com/swiftech-apogee-water-block.html
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it's supposed to outperform the Storm G5 blocks
Seanohue said:seriously? Its only $50 lol
Icedfire101 said:right now it is not known if it actually beats the storm, cathar had some problems reproducing the results... at any rate i would wait till some independent reviews start to show up
pwnt by pat said:Cathar uses a non-IHS sized test bed
Swiftech uses a IHS sized test bed
cathar said:situman said:i say we support Cathar all the way. A lot of the design of the new block was inspired by the storm and Cathar. Of course this is just all speculation. I do feel that Swiftech is trying to make a statement that "can we make a block that's better or matches what Cathar can make...and mass produce it at an affordable price."
Nah, this is not about Swiftech vs Cathar at all. We're all good friends and on good terms.
This is primarilly about Swiftech wanting to refresh their bread and butter budget block lineup, being the MCW600x.
As the data states, the Storm beats it handily on the small die setup and there are, or at least I firmly believe this, "issues" with their present large die testbed. Swiftech and I have discussed their large die testbed in the past at length. We have compared notes. Swiftech stands by their large-die testbed. I have not been able to reproduce the results they see with it for other blocks when monitoring the CPU die temperature of IHS capped CPU's, as opposed to the IHS surface temperature. Who's right? I can't say. What I can say is that without knowing the actual CPU die temperature, then you can never be truly sure, and so independent testing is required to color in the bigger picture.
The Apogee, at least from what is shown in the captured images, looks to my eye to be a very decent design, and certainly meets Swiftech's needs for a good-to-high performance moderately priced mainstream waterblock, and on that score it's a "win". As to the relative performance at the end of the day, Swiftech is just reporting what they see with their testbed, and that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do for any company.
I personally would've played the cards differently. Given that the Storm is still on the shelves, and that there is some doubt about the performance, even within their own testing (small vs large die), and the Storm is still selling well and the Apogee is an unproven design, I would not have released internal performance results nor would I have dropped the price on the Storm, and I would've just marketed the Apogee as their MCW600x replacement. By the time the independent testers and the marketplace have figured it all out, the stock of left-over Storm blocks would've mostly been sold at their full asking price, and if the Apogee truly performs better according to independent tests, then just discontinue the Storm and publish the internal results. If the Storm is found to be better, then Swiftech wouldn't have to lose any face over the published results. Would've been win-win whichever way it played out.
Just my 2c, since people here are asking about it. I don't understand the actions of the last few weeks myself, but Swiftech is not my company. I have enjoyed working with them though, and I do hope to continue doing so, in whatever capacity that turns out to be from here on.