20/6/08

EK Blocks GTX 280 full cover waterblock spied

Eddy from www.ekwaterblocks.com has at last released the first pictures of the anticipated full cover water block. Probably the neatest design we've seen so far, the front end as pictured here near the port end of the card stretches out to cover the companion display chip and are clearly screwed from the back here too to prove support. It also looks like Eddy has decided to make the block a single piece design instead of the bolt-on mosfet section that many will be familiar with anyone having used a single GPU block from EK before.

Whether or not this feature will remain with the final card remains to be seen - the only issue would be with non reference cards turning up in the future that sometimes require the ditching of this section to fit around items such as capacitors that would otherwise foul the block. Still XSPC have does this for a while now and it can only lead to better cooling for the mosfets.

There you have it! Now we await the 48xx series from ATI and judging by the noise that was made yesterday about the 4850, it should prove to be a far more popular card than the 3850. Seeing as we haven't heard a sniff about blocks for the new ATI cards yet, the manufacturers better get their skates on!