If you don’t like having big pipes leading away from the CPU, the waterblock concept aims to move them towards the back of the motherboard; you still need to have a place on this side of the case!
OUR water cooling remains the most efficient way to cool PC components but requires work with pipes inside the case. The new water side concept, originally unveiled at Computex 2023, proposes to change the traditional design of these devices.
This system is featured in the video below by Roman Der8auer Hartung; moreover, one of his acquaintances (ModdingCafé) developed this modified waterblock. His principle? It moves the fluid tubes behind the motherboard.. To do this, the block is divided into two parts: one, located on the front side of the motherboard, closes the processor; the other, located on the back of the motherboard, serves as an additional water tank and pipe mounting plate.
Interesting concept that still needs tweaking
The main advantage of this system is the absence of pipes on the front side of the motherboard, which makes everything more elegant. On the other side, the thickness of the waterblock backplate can cause problems in some cases. This is due to the fact that in most PC cases there is very little space between the side panel and the motherboard on this side; this would require a dual-chamber chassis with a significant cutout behind the motherboard. For the demo, der8auer uses Aorus’ B650E motherboard. This one tolerates a waterblock subject to the removal of the M.2 heatsink.
Der8auer clarifies that this is just a prototype and that adjustments are expected in terms of marketing and standardization. In particular, he believes that it is possible to reduce the width of the block located at the back of the motherboard.
In addition, the Ryzen 9 7950X (16 cores/32 threads) gets up to 93°C in Cinebench R23. Der8auer blames this on the quality of their product, but sees this water block as an innovative concept that deserves improvement.