Official EK statement - Nickel Plating Issues

[dejanh]

guys gabe wanted me to correct some info.

he says his blocks arent nickle plated but chrome plated seeing how its the final external layer.

There are people who did not know this?! Really?!

Swiftech has always used chrome, and the unmentionables are also using chrome in their plating process. There is so much disinformation going on everywhere with this nickel plating mess it is beyond words.

Here are a couple of facts, market and otherwise.

By volume EK probably sells the most blocks, certainly the most nickel plated blocks. I would love to get statistics on actual failure rates out of the total shipped in the last year but nobody seems to want to go there. Instead everyone just screams "EK sucks". What sucks is some people's ability to reason logically.

Swiftech chromes stuff so they are out of this equation all together, not to mention that they plate really thick, order of magnitude thicker than others. Together, EK and Swiftech probably hold the majority of this market.

BP, Aquacomputer, Watercool, etc. and others all pooled together barely sell any blocks so not much to discuss there in terms of failure. The volume is low and it is easy to have good QC oversight at all times. The only larger volume here (namely BP) has had these issues in the past. Hell, I have BP fittings where nickel flaked off right now.

Edit: Final tidbit of trivia...those that think that they can just easily move to one of the other German manufacturers have clearly not looked at the total cost after shipping and conversion. You will be very unpleasantly surprised when you see it. I ought to know. I bought stuff from pretty much everyone already. Not to even mention the generally very limited supply.