Swiftech to release Full Cover for Radeon HD6970

[gabe]

Great News!

We are now in a position to explain some of the design elements that we couldn't discuss earlier due to Non Disclosure Agreements with AMD.

The 6970 and 6950 series Radeons are coming in 2 flavors. I am not sure I am allowed to use the same terminology as that used by AMD, so let's call the first batch of boards released and available on the market right now the "initial release", and the upcoming revision the "revision".

There are subtle differences between these boards that will prevent a block designed strictly to work with "initial release" to mount on "revision", and I am glad to announce that we designed the Komodo HD6900 water block to work with both by using different VRM plates; this is the reason why we alluded to the possibility of changing VRM plates as a potential for future upgrades in previous posts, without being able to provide much details as we couldn't dislose any.

Let's take a look at this in greater details:

This is the Komodo HD6900 base, compatible with Radeon HD6970 initial release, as well as current HD6950



Now this is the upgraded version, compatible with Radeon HD6970 "revision"; you can see the different VRM plate, the lower left standoff on the main GPU base plate adjusted to the right, and an additional standoff installed by the Northside memory bank.



From a practical standpoint, people who own an intial release board and Komodo waterblock, and want to port their block to a "revision" board will only have to get the separate VRM plate at a moderate cost.

Important Note: We also made sure that the block would line up perfectly in Crossfire, between "intial release" and "revision".

Now for the housing internals - from the pictures below, we can see that the flow from the main GPU cavity circulates to the VRM plate by moving thru a an upper cavity in the housing which is sealed by a top cover. The channels going to the VRM's were carefully designed to minimize pressure drop, reason why we publize that this block has moderate pressure drop. The third picture shows the block with the top cover, one of the considerations that led us to use a sticker to cover the unusual number of screws.

Main cavities side


Upper cavity side




Finally, the Chrome plated C110 copper base plate continues with the Komodo and Epsilon thin pin matrix design, which has proven to provide superior GPU cooling against other solutions.



We are working around the clock in production, and expect to release this block on January 15.