Compatibility issues arise with EK’s blocks after HD 7970 design change

The highly reputable water block manufacturer EK has recently released a warning for all users of the HD 7970 graphics card and its water blocks. This warning is due to a design change on some of AMD’s reference HD 7970 graphics card now featuring a capacitor slightly higher than original.

As can be seen, the capacitor in the new design is about 1mm higher and has blue markings instead of pink. The use of the original EK-FC7970 on cards with the new design could result in burned graphics card, therefore you should double check the height of the capacitors before installing the water block.

However, EK has already responded to this issue and are now selling a modified version of the block to get past this problem. The changed water block features additional recess in the bottom side of the POM Acetal / Acrylic top as can be seen in the picture below.

The newly designed water block has been on sale since February 25th 2012 and will resolve the problem. If some customers still have the ‘old’ version of the water block yet have the new version of the graphics card (with higher capacitor), he will be able to purchase the replacement through the EK Webshop.

Source: Press Release