CPU Water Block Round Up APOGEE GT/GTX vs. STORM vs. FuZion vs. APOGEE vanilla

The Technology

At the heart of the APOGEE GT is the same patented pin matrix design as the original APOGEE (the successor to the Storm) and part of what makes this design so great is that besides offering very large surface area for the water to contact, the lack of impingement means that water will flow much more easily and quickly around the loop, allowing for the use of less expensive, or equally expensive, but less noisy pumps.


As you can see in the above picture, my APOGEE vanilla is a little worse for the wear, and the base is installed 90 degrees off of where it should be (it was corrected for the testing in this article), but more importantly if you look at the pins, the APOGEE GT uses MUCH smaller pins than the original APOGEE, giving it dramatically increased surface area, while still providing very large channels for the water to flow between the inlet and the outlet.

The APOGEE GTX uses the same diamond pin matrix base plate as the APOGEE GT, but the inlet and outlet are further apart in order to give the water more time to pass over the pins inside. Also, due to the diagonal orientation of the barbs vs. the horizontal orientation of the barbs on the GT, the APOGEE GTX has slightly more internal turbulence which is good for heat exchange.

Although I didn’t measure flow rates, it honestly didn’t make a noticeable difference when I was watching the bubbles zoom around the loop as they bled out, unlike the STORM, which seemed to slow the water to a standstill….

I promised to mention the O-ring later in this article, so here it is: Another innovation that the APOGEE GT brings to the table is that it ships with both a small O-ring (an “O” shaped piece of rubber that serves to seal the perimeter of the block where the copper contacts the acetal top housing) and a fatter one.

The reasoning behind this accidental discovery that Swiftech’s engineers made is that if a thicker O-ring is installed, it would cause the base of the block to warp or become slightly convex, which means that when pressure is applied from the top down on the four corners, and then pressure is applied to the center of the base from the CPU upward, that the block’s contact surface would end up overall flatter than if it were to start flat.