EK News -NVIDIA Titan V and Threadripper Updates

EKWB has introduced a waterblock for NVIDIA’s Titan V GPU.

For those that don’t know the Titan V is a significant changeto NVidia’s confusing Titan line up.  When Titan was first launched it was marketed as a compute card that was really more of a high end GPU with a slight boost to compute.  It felt much more like an excuse to charge more the best version of a gaming card you get months before the “high end” release.  Predictably gamers with money bought them.  The new Titan V is more of a compute card than ever before and comes with a price tag normally associated with the workstation cards.  At $3000 this GPU is not cheap, but then nor is any current GPU if you can even find any in stock.  For more about what the Titan V is, we suggest reading up on Anandtech’s informative article.  EK’s after market waterblock is coming in two variants:

• Nickel Plated Copper + Acrylic
• Nickel Plated Copper + Acetal

We would prefer to see the Acetal version in raw copper as some are still skeptical of EK’s nickel plate in the long term and it’s hard to tell the difference with the Acetal anyway.

Let’s first take a look at the back of the block:

First, we can see a massive space for GPU DIE, but that isn’t surprising considering the size of GV100 DIE which measures in at 815mm^2. That is mostly due to HBM memory which will be surrounding the GPU die itself. This waterblock also covers both of the VRM solutions, located on the left and right sides of PCB. Direct cooling of the VRM cooling is very useful on high power cards because even though VRM chips may be rated for high temperatures, running them cooler will make them last longer.

As NVidia chose not to support low end DVI ports on this high end GPU then the card could now be a single slot opening up the ability to run up to 7 of these cards in the right motherboard with the right bridge adapter. EK has included single slot adapter that you can install it in place of the dual slot adapter.

As usual it’s quite sexy and as usual the black backplate is extra.  As usual with backplates you may want to confirm compatability with the slots in your motherboard as the extra thickness can prove problematic for the first slot where motherboard vendors sometimes go out of spec.

Pricing and availability

EK-FC Titan V waterblock is available for purchase through the EKWB Web Shop for now, and through your local water cooling store most likely soon.

The backplates are available to to pre-order and will start shipping on Tuesday, 27th of February and are also available to be pre ordered on EKWB Web Shop

As far as pricing, EK has provided official MSRP bellow:

Source: EKWB

Threadipper

EK previously had released a waterblock for AMD’s ThreadRipper with a coldplate that was the same size as the Supremacy EVO’s cold plate.  Due to the much larger size and die locations of Threadripper this resulted in poor cooling of ThreadRipper CPUs. In essence it was lazy design work and the competition have forced EK to update the design with something more suited.  EK decided to make the change starting with the new monoblock made for GIGABYTE’s X399 motherboards.

Since GIGABYTE’s X399 board has a VRM heatsink near the I/O, you get a little heatsink included with the monoblock to replace the original heatsink.

When everything is mounted, it looks like this

In a rare move EK has publicly apologized to all enthusiasts about the previous design of coldplate, and offered a free upgrade kit.  We appreciate this apology, because in recent years we have felt that EK have focused too much on aesthetics and had become complacent about performance.

EK have started to implement this change right away, which is a good thing. This increased surface area of the coldplate is effectively increasing the coverage of ThreadRipper’s die and IHS, resulting in better heat transfer and lower temperatures.

As you can see, most of the IHS is now covered as well as all of the two dies.  However the proof is always in the performance testing to see how much better it really is.  EK will also be releasing a new CPU version of the Supremacy EVO that will include this change.  Unfortunately the current EVO CPU block only design can’t be upgraded and so EK is offering a $25 coupon off the new block but only if you bought the old one before the 24th of November.  $25 is not that much given you may be throwing away the old block.  Still it’s better than nothing, but EK loyalists will probably still feel a little burned, particularly if they bought the block on the 25th of November. The upgrade kit will work with:

• EK-FB ASUS ROG ZE RGB Monoblock
• EK-FB GA X399 GAMING RGB Monoblock

This EK-FB GA X3999 GAMING RGB monoblock is compatible with the following boards:

• GIGABYTE X399 Aorus Gaming 7 (rev.1.0)
• GIGABYTE X399 Designare EX (rev.1.0)

Pricing and availability

The monoblock is available to buy in EKWB Web-Shop for the following price:

If you want to get upgrade kit for your existing monoblock you would need to contact EK support for further assistance.

EK also announced waterblock support for MSI’s X399 motherboards

The monoblock also features the newly re-designed coldplate.

It is compatible with following:

• MSI X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
• MSI X399 SLI Plus

Pricing and availability

The monoblock is available to purchase from EKWB store for the following price:

Source: EKWB