Swiftech Apogee GTZ Core i7 Waterblock Review

The Swiftech Apogee GTZ

Swiftech as a company began in 1994 maintaining high end UNIX imaging systems; around 1997 they made the move to cooling for personal computers. Since then Swiftech has been turning out products for the overclocking community at affordable prices. Water cooling a PC in its early years was almost a dark art of fish tank pumps, heater cores from cars, and homemade CPU blocks. Thanks to companies like Swiftech its now as easy as a couple of clicks and you can have a complete water cooling system drop shipped to your front door.

Water is becoming more and more common and not as much of a mystery due to self contained kits like the Corsair Hydro Series H50, but for the user pushing their system for all it’s worth, there are still folks like Swiftech with their line of waterblocks for chipsets, GPUs, and CPUs, as well as their line of Quiet Power radiators and pumps to help users keep their systems cool.

Here is Swiftechs flagship CPU waterblock, the Apogee GTZ i7. Now if you happen already have an Apogee GTZ for your LGA775 system the GTZ i7 is the same block but with the LGA1366 mounting hardware; speaking of which, you can buy the mounting kit, Apogee-GTZ-Ci7-HD, to transplant the waterblock from your LGA775 system to your LGA1366 system.

Packing

We received a retail Apogee GTZ i7 from our friends at Xoxide.com for us to give the once over. The Apogee GTZ i7 comes packed in a plastic clamshell that protected the waterblock nicely.

On the back of the packing are the instructions on installing the Apogee GTZ i7 onto your CPU and motherboard.

Pulling the packing open we can see the Apogee GTZ i7 ships with the backing plate installed. To me this is not a half bad idea. The backing plate combined with the plastic clamshell packing protects the finish of the copper base. In the lower pocket we can see the included fittings and hose clamps.

Along with the Apogee GTZ i7 you get 3/8 and 1/2 hose barbs, hose clamps, and a tube of Arctic Ceramique thermal paste.