Head, Chill, Block – Supercool Computers Direct-The Water Block and Delid Tool for Intel Alder Lake | Practical test with the Intel Core i9-12900K

Ever smaller manufacturing processes lead to ever higher heat densities in CPUs and GPUs. Not least because of this, the new Alder Lake CPUs from Intel run so hot that any air cooler has almost no chance with a large i9, no matter how many watts of waste heat it is designed for. Because the often-cited bottleneck is already further up the cooling chain, with the IHS and the thermally conductive layers that connect them to the silicon die and base plate of the cooler. Wouldn’t it be practical if you could simply eliminate this intermediate layer? Today we do exactly that.

A big thank you in advance to Esenel and Ivano89 from the Intel Overclocking Discord, with whose help I can already test a finished retail sample of the Delid kit and Direct-Die water blocks! The colleagues from Supercool Computers also promised us a press sample, but so far this has been lost somewhere between language and logistics barriers. Incidentally, the kit can currently only be obtained on dodgy channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Discord and with advance payment via Paypal. It remains to be seen in a moment whether the hardware makes a more reasonable impression. So let’s first have a look at what you get sent from Thailand for your 160 euros.

Scope of delivery and construction of the water block

The packaging is just as spartan as the ordering process, but at least a set of Allen keys (Imbus) and templates for re-gluing the IHS are included in the scope of delivery in addition to the water block and delid tool.

The water block itself consists of two components, the actual block with the water channels made of white, semi-transparent acrylic and a black frame with LGA1700 mounting holes and of course RGB lighting – how could it be otherwise in 2022.

However, the latter is optional and does not have to be installed together with the actual cooler. If we turn the block over, the relatively simple construction of the frame with a glued-in RGB LED strip is revealed, after all with the 3-pin digital standard.

The block can be easily removed from the frame from below, so that the actual assembly is not made any more difficult. Here you can already see that the bottom plate of the cooler effectively has the shape of the Alder Lake IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader).

For the other photos of the block, I switch to a black background so that the inner workings can be seen better. The block alone is barely larger than an LGA1700 socket and kept very simple. In addition to the G1/4 inch inlets and outlets, there are only 4 recesses for the screws to connect to the base plate. Furthermore, the lock-shaped interior can already be seen from above.

This is attached to the white acrylic element from above with four M3 screws with 2 mm Allen head and must be removed for later installation on the CPU. The seal between the components is also provided by a white, semi-transparent O-ring, which, according to Supercool Computers, has a particularly high degree of flexibility and sealing ability.

Another six more of these M3 screws connect the two acrylic components, with one effectively only providing the two G1/4 threads, and the other for directing the water jet through an effective jetplate onto the base plate and further guidance within the block cares. This time two of the semi-transparent O-rings are used for the seal, a smaller one to separate the inlet from the outlet and a larger one to generally seal the block.