Introduction

Would you believe it has been over two years since our last GPU water block review? I have done a roundup of GPU blocks for most Nvidia GPU generations now and was beginning to think that perhaps there won’t be an RTX 4000 series represented here given the pricing of GPUs and no sample availability for GPU block reviews. But then Watercool came to the rescue, which is quite fitting since it was a Watercool GPU block that was last covered too! For those unaware, Watercool is a small German outfit that is still growing to meet the needs of the DIY watercooling community. Heatkiller is one of its product lines that has made the company famous, especially for the design, build quality, aesthetics and performance they usually carry for the money. The smaller nature of the company does mean that Watercool does not always have cooling solutions ready on day one, but better late than never as we begin our latest GPU block roundup starting with the Heatkiller V Pro!

Watercool had reached out a couple of months ago to mention they were releasing a new Heatkiller V Pro series—which debuted with the RTX 4090 FE and a select few RTX 4080 cards—for the ASUS RTX 4090 Strix and TUF cards. They were even willing to send a loaner GPU to test it with and had no problem with me reaching out to other GPU block manufacturers for a roundup—thanks Watercool! The flip side is this meant I had only so much time before I could wait for companies to send their blocks in and finish testing before I had to ship the GPU back. As such, please be aware that I was not able to include every manufacturer out there. The Heatkiller V Pro RTX 4090 Strix/TUF block comes in two different top options—the Acryl NI ARGB seen above with the shiny annealed stainless steel top cover and the Acryl NI-BL ARGB I have here that goes for black anodized aluminium instead. Both are otherwise identical in all other aspects and this review should be valid for the other version too, so let’s begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications