Swiftech Apogee XT (rev 2) Water Block

ap·o·gee: The farthest or highest point; the apex; a final climactic stage

The Apogee™ XT is Swiftech's flagship CPU waterblock. It represents the culmination of months of research and development marked by hundreds of hours of competitive testing. The end result is a product that manages to surpass everything that made its predecessor -the Apogee™ GTZ, one of the best water-blocks in the world; a substantial increase in thermal performance, sumptuous functional elegance, unique convenience features for beginners and extreme users alike, all contribute to place the new "XT" in a class of its own.

Revision 2 of the Apogee XT focuses on improving the block flow rate without affecting its thermal performance. Comparative pressure drop curves between Rev1 and Rev2 are presented in the Performance Data section below. The housing is internally redesigned as shown in the specifications section below. There are no other modifications to the product.

Features & Benefits:

Summary of benefits compared to the Apogee™ GTZ

• PERFORMANCE: Best water-block in the world for thermal performance validated by numerous independant reviews.
  
  
• MODERATE FLOW RESTRICTION: Revision 2 of the Apogee XT retains all the thermal performance benefits of the original, but now features a relatively moderate pressure drop profile, thus improving overall peformance of the liquid cooling loop in a multi-block environment.
  
  
• STUNNING ELEGANCE: the XT water-block is entirely machined from copper and brass. The subtly sculpted brass housing receives a luxurious black chrome plating finish.
  
  
• UNIQUE CONVENIENCE FEATURES: Swiftech's retention mechanism is universally recognized as the simplest and safest to use. It has been further improved to feature universal compatibility with all Intel® Core™ desktop processors. The XT also features a unique detachable inlet plate that can be rotated at 180° to allow installation of extra large compression fittings as shown on the right.

Features & Benefits:

• Thermal Design: The Apogee™ XT is optimized for Intel® Core™ i5 and Core i7 processors but it will also yield world-class performance results with all compatible processors from AMD® and/or Intel® server class processors. Thermal design of the cooling engine combines the benefits of direct coolant impingement over the CPU area with a copper base plate characterized by a pin matrix composed of 225 µm (0.009") micro structures.
  
  
• Pressure Drop Specification: Effective March 8, 2011 all Apogee XT's are being shipped with an internally revised housing that substantially improves the water-block pressure drop specifications without affecting the thermal performance of the block. A comparative Pressure Drop vs. Flow rate curve is presented here to quantify the improvement.
  
  
• Mechanical Design: Mechanical design of the copper base plate is optimized for Intel® socket LGA 771, 775, 1156 and 1366. The topographically mapped mating surface has been considerably enhanced to yield dominating results with Intel® socket LGA 1156 and 1366 processors. Other types of processors such as AMD® socket F, AM2, AM3 and 940 may also benefit from the enhanced contact area.
  
  
• Retention Mechanism: The Swiftech's tool free retention system uses springs and limited travel thumb-screws for high quality and repeatable mounts. The waterblock hold-down plate features elongated holes providing compatibility with all Intel® Core™ desktop processors. Motherboard back-plates provide server-class rigidity to the assembly.
  
  
• Comparative Temperature Data: The following tables report the data collected from testing performed with actual retail processors under 100% load using CPU Burn. Published results are the best of a minimum of 5 mounts. These results are indicative of our test bench settings and of the tested processors only. Results may vary from one processor to another. Competitive data is provided for comparative purposes, and is only representative of the specific waterblock samples tested here. Two samples of the same competitive blocks were used for validation purposes.

Intel® Core™ i7 920 (Bloomfield D0) @4095 Mhz - 1.392 V Actual

Waterblock	Delta T (*)
Apogee™ GTZ	40.82 °C
Apogee™ XT (factory inlet configuration)	37.88 °C
Apogee™ XT (alternate inlet configuration) (**)	37.99 °C
Reference competitive data (Heatkiller rev3.0)	39.39 °C

Comments:

• In factory configuration, the Apogee™ XT showed a 3°C improvement over the Apogee™ GTZ.
• A 1.5 °C improvement was observed compared the best competitive waterblock tested in our lab.
• The temperature degradation between factory inlet configuration and alternate inlet configuration was 0.1°C

(*) Delta T is the difference in temperature between averaged CPU core temperature as reported by RealTemp and averaged air temperature reported by 3 thermal probes located at the fans inlets.
(**) Alternate inlet configuration is when the inlet is rotated at 180° to allow installation of extra large compression fittings.
(***) Mounting hardware for socket 775 is not included, but available free upon request from Swiftech directly; Mounting hardware for socket 771 is not included at all.