First look at XSPC Raystorm CPU Block

So when I ordered the dual PMP-450s's I thought it would be good to take a look at the new higher performance xspc cpu block.  XSPC's watercooling kits have been extremely popular because they are so affordable, and the rasa block was king of the performance/$ hill.  Martin has done an excellent review of the raystorm here, however I wanted to see what this really meant to me.

Given that the pumps would arrive on monday I thought it was time to pull apart my rig so that I can compare the two blocks:

Yuck to all that dust on the rx360, time to get myself an air blower!

The package is pretty small but the block was protected with plastic foamy stuff.

You get 3 mount plates in the intel package - I assume they are for socket 775, 1155/1156 and 1366/2011.  Dissapointing that they weren't actually marked nor were there instructions in the box.  Of course you can figure it out, but still.

Package contents

The mount kit is actually identical to the rasa, the difference is that this time there are additional metal washers to prevent the plastic ones from being deformed.  It's not my favourite mount kit, but it works.



The base has a nice mirror finish - the rasa did too, but mine was corroded around the edge when it arrived, so the raystorm definitely has an edge here.

You can see the groove design of the block through the fitting holes.  Martin has some excellent shots of the interior if you're interested.  Overall, looking around the fittings you see a whole lot more space, it really looks as if it was designed with high flow in mind.

Comparing to the rasa you can see that they look very similar from the top, one thing to note is that the mount is not attached to the raystorm:

However underneath you can see that the base is slightly larger on the raystorm:

You can also see the rasa is not mirrored anymore, I had to lap it after using Indigo xtreme, it tends to leave the TIM welded to the block which is a real pain.  I did a quick lap to 1500 grit, but for the upcoming tests I'll polish it a bit more to try and represent a new rasa better.


That's all for now, test results will come later in the week.