When I woke up this morning there were a number of emails in my inbox, but one I did not expect to see was Lian Li's latest announcement: the arrival of the CB-01 water block. The manufacturer that is known for its high-quality all-aluminum cases, and that hardly built anything else, has built a water block for cooling your CPU.
The block is built in collaboration with some of the folks from Overclockers UK and CaseKing from Germany. It features a fairly straightforward design: two inlets at the top, a cold plate below, and a couple of mounting brackets. The inlet and outlet ports are based on the G1/4" threading, which has become the universally used threading in the world of custom water cooling.
The cold plate is machined from a solid block of copper, which is then nickel plated, followed by a tin-cobalt plating for the best thermal transfer and corrosion protection. The actual cold plate area is 60 x 60 mm, above which resides a 32.2 x 27.3 mm microchannel structure to further increase thermal transfer.
The top of the block is clear, with pre-drilled holes for 5 mm LEDs.
Included with the block are backplates to enable mounting on AMD and Intel sockets; 1 cc of heat sink paste; a spare rubber gasket for in case you decide to open the block up; and all the nuts, bolts, and washers you'll need to complete the mounting process.
Lian Li won't be bringing the water block to the U.S. just yet, though. It will first be shipped to the folks over at CaseKing and Overclockers UK in December, where it will have a price tag of £44. Exact U.S. availability wasn't given, but chances are it will be sometime at the start of 2016.
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Niels Broekhuijsen has been with Tom's Hardware since 2012, and works as a Contributing Editor on the news team. He covers mostly hardware, components, and anything else that strikes his fancy. Outside of work, he likes to travel, cook, and fix things that are broken.
You can follow him at @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.
