14 DAY TRIAL // Water cooling specialist EK has just announced that the company is working on developing a series of new water cooling accessories for the Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z and Crosshair V Formula ROG series motherboards.
The water blocks are designed to cover the VRMs (MOSFETs) of the two boards, while cooling for the southbridge chips (the PCH in Intel's case) will be provided by the Asus factory heatsinks.
The EK-FB Crosshair V will be available in both a copper acetal and a nickel (EN) acetal version and is scheduled to release in a week’s time. The block will cover the voltage regulation module and the AMD 990FX northbridge chip.
EK-MOSFET Max IV Gene will also be available in two versions, this time nickel (EN) plexi and nickel (EN) acetal and is scheduled to arrive in 2-3 weeks time.
Both of the Asus motherboards are part of the company's Republic off Gamers (ROG) product line which includes advanced features and hardware specifications to cater to the needs of the gaming crowd.
The Crosshair V Formula board for AMD AM3+ processors sports four PCI Express x16 slots compatible with SLI and CrossFireX setups, seven SATA 6Gbps connectors, 7.1-channel SupremeFX X-Fi 2 sound, an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller, six USB 3.0 ports and a powered 6Gbps eSATA port.
CPU power is provided by an Extreme Engine Digi+ 8+2 phase VRM and the board also packs a wide assortment of Asus specific technologies, such as ROG Connect, MemOK! or the TurboV Evo application.
The second motherboard to get water cooled by EK Water Blocks, the Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z, is a micro-ATX model based on Intel's Z68 chipset.
This also includes support for AMD CrossFireX and Nvidia SLI setups, ROG Connect support and an on-board Supreme X-Fi sound chip, as well as six SATA ports, two USB 3.0 ports and a pair of eSATA connectors.