First Waterblock for Supercomputer Graphics Cards, EK-FCQ6000

Whether because of the approaching year end or some other reason, EK has been moving very quickly in the cooling industry, having released every sort of water cooling component except one compatible with graphics accelerators used in CAD, CAM and HPC (high-performance computing / supercomputers) applications.

The range of coolers has finally been filled though. EK has launched the EK-FCQ6000, which is intended for precisely those types of situations.

It is unclear how many enterprises, university campuses and government organizations will warm up to the waterblock enough to use water cooling in large systems.

All of them are eligible though, assuming they use or plan to use any of the video cards in NVIDIA's Quadro 5000, Quadro 6000, Tesla C20xx and Tesla M20xx series.

The waterblock has a base made of C110 grade electrolytic copper and the top is built out of a cut stainless steel metal plate.

It should be able to cool not just the graphics processing unit (GPU), but also the VRM (voltage regulation module) and RAM (random access memory) chips.

NBR rubber washers make sure the construction is well sealed, while screw-in brass standoffs allow for easy installation (they are pre-installed).

Furthermore, EK will ship the waterblock with a single-slot I/O bracket, allowing multiple cards to be installed much more easily and within tighter confines.

A dose of Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal grease (TIM) is bundled with the rest of the accessories.

EK will start shipping the EK-FCQ6000 CAD/CAM/HPC graphics card full-cover waterblock on December 19, 2012 (tomorrow).

The price will be of 119.95 Euro, including VAT, which corresponds to $119.95-158. Not too high a price, and it should be negotiable too, when ordered in large quantities. After all, while supercomputer builders probably won't be too quick to adopt this new waterblock, they shouldn't be too quick to dismiss it either.