Mar 22, 2011 13:54 GMT  ·  By

Officially launched just a couple of weeks ago, AMD's dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 graphics card will soon get water-cooled as EK Water Blocks is getting ready to launch the EK-FC6990, the first waterblock that was specially designed to fit this card.

The waterblock uses a massive piece of copper to cover the HD 6990 from end to end as well as an improved internal design with more fins that should allow for lower operation temperatures and increased overclocking headroom.

Together with the EK-FC6990 waterblock, EK is also preparing an HD 6990 backplate. This was designed so that it will make contact with the rear memory chips to provide some much-needed passive cooling.

A release date has not been made official, but the EK-FC6990 has already entered production and is expected to hit the market in about 10 to 15 days. Pricing is also unknown at this time.

In addition to the EK-FC6990 waterblock and the back plate, a company representative said on the XtremeSystem forum that they are also considering manufacturing a single slot bracket for the AMD Radeon HD 6990.

The HD 6990 is AMD's fastest graphics card to date as it packs two Cayman XT cores on the same PCB and features 3072 stream processors, 192 texturing units and 64 ROPs.

The cores are clocked at 830MHz, but the card also features a special switch that enables users to run the card into the so-called AUSUM mode that overclocks the GPUs to 880MHz.

This raises the 375W TDP of the HD 6990 to about 450W, and makes the card output a full 225W of heat back into the system's case.

Furthermore, the operating temperatures of the two cores and of the VRMs will raise significantly, which will in turn raise the RPM of the fan and the amount of noise generated.

Water-cooling the card should help with all of these problems and could also increase the overclocking potential of the card, so EK's waterblock will most certainly be welcomed by computer enthusiasts.

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EK waterblock for AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card
EK waterblock for AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics cardEK backplate for AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card
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