14 DAY TRIAL // United Kingdom-based Blastflow, a subsidiary of PC vendor Vadim Computers has just unveiled the Blastflow Tidal Skulltrail SB Block, a watercooling solution for the extremely hot Skulltrail enthusiast platform.
If you are one of the few lucky enthusiasts that can afford a brand-new Skulltrail-powered gaming rig, then you must know that the dual-processor behemoth runs as hot as hell when under full load. Blastflow copper cooler for the Southbridge and SLI bridges comes to help you fight the pestering residual heat. The watercooling copper block weighs about 314 grams and uses standard water connectors.
The new Tidal Skulltrail SB Block is built using polished copper and transparent acrylic polymers, that can sustain high temperature dissipated by the three hotspots in the platform. The waterblock can work with all the watercooling systems, so it might be just the right choice. Oh, wait, since there's no other offering to compete with it, it's the only viable solution, if you plan to keep your powerful system in optimal working condition.
Intel developed the Skulltrail performance with the pure performance in mind. The two-processor rig is neither energy-efficient, nor cold-running. It eats up electricity in a similar manner with a sports car sucking the fuel tank dry, and it spits out heat - lots of it. Despite the fact that the processors are built on the 45-nanometer architecture, that is famous for its low heat performance, the high-end graphics cards stuffed inside the rig will heat until the boiling point.
More than that, the two nForce 100 chips from Nvidia are dissipating more heat than the ESB2 Southbridge itself. Of course, they are a vital feature for a gaming computer, as they power the multiple SLI links created between three or even four Nvidia graphics cards. Since heatpipe cooling was more of a hindrance than an achievement, Intel ended up putting a modified cooler for lower-end graphics cards to keep things cool.
There is no word on pricing and availability as of the moment of writing. However, given the fact that you've got all the money to get yourself a Skulltrail rig, that should be the least of your problems. Too bad you can't buy its market availability, though.