Watercooling graphics cards can be a bit of a nightmare, especially installing and fitting the block which is often one of the hardest parts. Furthermore you could go to all that effort and then you might have a rubbish quality GPU that doesn’t even overclock very well. That’s why Powercolor have shown us the LCS HD 7970 which is an AMD HD 7970 that comes pre-fitted with a EK GPU water block and factory overclocked to a hefty 1050MHz, up from 925MHz stock.
Here you can see the Powercolor LCS HD 7970 in ac tion and it literally was as easy as plugging in a couple of tubes and being ready to go. The graphics card also comes with a black backplate to cool components on the rear side of the PCB.
The EK branding is generally quite subtle across most of the graphics card but on the fittings area at the top it is quite clear to see.
Powercolor’s LCS HD 7970 is already out and on the market and costs around $650+.
Stay tuned to eTeknix for more Computex coverage in our Computex section.
Image(s) courtesy of eTeknix at Computex
$650=not bad. +=bad.
A 7970 GHz Edition costs around $460, the EK waterblock is about $115 so Powercolor takes about $70~ overhead for installing the waterblock and making sure the HD 7970 is speed binned for the overclock which I think is reasonable, obviously doing it yourself is a lot cheaper but you are playing a lottery about whether your 7970 will even reach those clocks although most should
Computer parts are much more expensive here than in Britain, the USA or even Europe as a whole hence I’m always choking over prices. Although we get most of the parts and all the well known good stuff here, the prices are ridiculous. Not many can afford them and If I wasn’t in the game, I’d be one of the not many.
On the brighter side of things, our day to day living expenses are a lot less than a lot of European countries. I guess you can’t have it all.