News from EKWB, InWin and Noctua!

EK

EKWB has released three new monoblocks for various AMD X470 chipset based motherboards.

The ASUS Strix X470-F monoblock is compatible with the ASUS X480 Strix motherboad only.

Pricing and Availability

The mono block is available to be bought in EK’s store at the following price:

EK has made two monoblocks for GIGABYTE’s lineup of motherboards:

• EK-FB GA X470 Gaming 5 RGB Monoblock

• EK-FB GA X470 Gaming 7 RGB Monoblock

Pricing and availiability:

Monoblocks are available for purchase in EK’s store and have the follwing MSRP:

Limited Edition Supremacy CPU Blocks

Previously, for their anniversary, EK launched a special edition golden of Supremacy EVO 

But, it was a very limited run and the color combination wasn’t for everyone.  Now EK is launching 6 Supremacy EVO CPU water blocks that feature the same aesthetic upgrade as the original anniversary edition but in different colors..

This run is also very limited, as there are 100 pieces of each color combination, meaning that there will be only 600 of these water blocks made.

Pricing and Availability

Waterblocks will start selling on Tuesday, 8th of May, 9 PM CST untill supplies last. They will be available for purchase in the EK web shop. Pricing will be announced when they launch in store, so it is unknown for now.

NOCTUA

The long awaited Noctua A series fan is finally here:

This new fan design represents years of Noctua engineering and has been designed to be an all-around general purpose fan, meaning it should perform well as a case fan, CPU heatsink fan or, in our favourite way, used as a radiator fan.  This is shown well in their provided data plot:

Here are the following specs of the fan:

• Rotation speed from 450-2000 RPM
• 60 CFM
• 140mm adapter
• SSO2 Bearing
• Anti Vibration Mount
• Ultra tight blade clearances for static pressure
• Flow acceleration channels to increase airflow at the outer edges of the blade
• Stepped blade to induce turbulent airflow for better cooling
• Sterrox polymer blade material for reduced vibration and resonance
• Reinforced motor hub
• Low noise PWM driver to reduce low rpm motor switching noise
• Noise  22.6 dBA
• Voltage 12V
• Amperage 0.14A
• Power usage 1.68W
• MTBF >150.000 hours
• Warranty of 6 years

For more detailed info on the various versions of the fan, please visit Noctua’s website.  As always specs can not be directly compared to rivals because several manufacturers publish optimistic numbers.  But we do expect this fan to do quite well, the question is really whether it dethrones the Gentle Typhoon.  Certainly it doesn’t beat it at the price – as Noctua charge $30 per fan.  For now it seems only the horrible “normal” Noctua colors are available, but we hope that the alternative colors will be launched soon.

In Win

Following the SFF case trend, In Win has released the A1 Mini-ITX case.

The case comes in two colors – black and white. It is of course filled with RGB goodness but it also comes with an integrated In Win 600W 80 plus bronze power supply and surprisingly a Qi wireless charger which we think is a real nice touch. The nice thing about an integrated power supply is that In Win have already handled the cable management.  The downside of course it that it’s only a 600W supply and the GPU cables are only 2×6+2 – but of course with such a small case it’s probably not the best idea to be pushing a ton of power anyway.  There are 2 USB 3.0 ports (why not also a 3.1/c?), four places to mount 120mm fans(on the side, in the rear and two in the “floating bottom”) and two 2.5 inch drive bays.

You can see more info about it at In Win’s website.  In general we think this is a great design but we question the ability of the side fan and the PSU to exhaust hot air out of the hexagonal pattern on the side panel.