14 DAY TRIAL // You'd think that a new graphics adapter from Advanced Micro Devices would warrant a new water block or two from EK. After all, the Ljubljana-based premium water cooling gear manufacturer seems to launch one every other week. It's not happening this time though.
Well, the company might release one or two, but it's more likely that it is reserving the big guns for the Radeon R9 290/290X.
Then again, it's not like there's such a great need for water blocks specifically invented for the AMD Radeon R9 280X.
After all, the video card is based on the Tahiti XT GPU, the same one used on the Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950 graphics cards.
This means that the PCB (printed circuit board) is largely similar to those as well. As such, existing EK water blocks are already supported by the R9 280X.
That's right, most manufactured R9 280X use the existing circuit board design 109-C38637, or a proprietary design such as ASUS DirectCU II and MATRIX.
So if you find an EK block for any of those products, you can assume it will work on the corresponding R9 280X as well (ASUS R9 280X Matrix for instance).
EK has already renamed the EK-FC7970 Matrix water block to EK-FC R9-280X Matrix, making the search even easier.
In actuality, the Ljubljana company has added more than 15 different Radeon R9 280X (as well as numerous Radeon R9 270X and -R7 260X series) graphics cards from various manufacturers to the EK Cooling Configurator database.
Once the Radeon R9 290X cooler gets released on October 15, that one will make the list too, in all five versions, along with and an aesthetic retention backplate by October 18.
Sadly, though the EK-FC R9-280X Matrix already has a product page, the EK-FC R9-290X, or whatever its name will be, doesn't.