Watercooling specialist EK Water Blocks has added a several custom made water blocks to its product line-up. The blocks are specifically designed for a certain product and can form the missing link in a fast yet silent system. The first product is the EK-FB-KIT SR-X (model: 270-SE-W888) and contains a heatsink for Intel's C606 chipset and the two PCI-Expresss 3.0 switch chips of the EVGA SR-X dual-socket motherboard. The kit also contains two smaller heatsinks, which provide watercooling to the VRMs of both LGA 2011 sockets on this extreme motherboard. EK Water Blocks claims that this set is also compatible with watercooling systems that have a relatively weak pump as well. The cooling profile of the blocks is quite wide, meaning there's little resistance. The set is available in either nickle or nickle + acetal versions, the latter of which is a transparent plastic, which shows the cooling water flowing through.
While the blocks may be able to cool the VRMs better, it's unlikely to affect overclocking performance, given the fact EVGA's motherboard is incompatible with the current unlocked multiplier CPUs. In the event that Intel releases a special LGA 2011 chip with an unlocked multiplier, these water blocks will provide the best overclocking potential.
EK-FB KIT SR-X nickel
EK-FB KIT SR-X acetal
The second specialized block is the EK-FC7970 Lightning, a full-cover water block that takes up only a single slot and is designed for use with MSI's R7970 Lightning graphics card. This card has a modified PCB with improved power design, which is beneficial to overclockers. The full-cover block chills the GPU, memory and the VRMs, keeping all mosfets nicely cooled and allowing overclockers to get just that bit of extra performance.
To ensure compatibility with weaker pumps, the EK-FC7970 Lightning water block also has relatively wide channels. Naturally, if you wish to cool a multi-GPU setup with full-cover blocks, a stronger pump is recommended. EK Water Blocks' cooling block for the graphics card has a nickled cover.
The nickled version of the EK-FB KIT SR-X is available at a price of €129.95 (£102), while the transparent cover model costs €134.95 (£106). The EK-FC7970 Lightning block for MSI's graphics card is priced at €114.95 (£90).
EK-FC7970 Lightning
