Introduction

EK Water Blocks, or simply EKWB or EK, is arguably the most well-known of several companies dedicated to the PC DIY watercooling market. It has been around for over 15 years and saw the rise and fall of many other brands along the way while diversifying into other market segments, including the professional server space, pre-built systems, and even B2B work with co-branded motherboards and GPUs in addition to other partners outside the PC space entirely—think cooling for self-driving cars, for example. I’ve seen the team at EK change a lot over the years too, with many projects not coming to fruition and more that are coming up even a pleasant surprise to yours truly. The company’s design language has also been evolving continuously since I started reviewing DIY watercooling components, yet one thing was missing until today as there have not been any EK radiator reviews on TechPowerUp! Surely, it is time to rectify this?

EK’s previous radiator line was called EK-Coolstream and came in the SE, PE, and XE series for slim, performance, and Xtreme. I had covered all three in their largest sizes elsewhere and was the only one to test EK’s short-lived venture into the 180 mm fans and radiator segment, too. The 140 mm fan sizes had a separate Coolstream CE line, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. The Coolstream XE was the most impressive of the five in providing excellent thermal performance from medium-high airflow and very good scaling for those who wanted as much cooling as possible at the expense of noise. It was especially handy in a case with a single radiator slot, and I was thus curious to see what the updated version—the EK-Quantum Surface X360M—offers in 2022. I have multiple EK radiator reviews coming up, including the thinner EK-Quantum Surface S360 being covered alongside, and let’s also thank EKWB for providing a review sample of the EK-Quantum Surface X360M to TechPowerUp!

Specifications