Thursday, December 5th 2013
EK Unveils the EK-Ascendancy Water Cooling Control Board
EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium water cooling gear manufacturer, is excited to give you first glimpse of the upcoming EK-Ascendancy water cooling system control board which has been in development for the past 12 months. The unit is design to work in conjuction with EK-Ascendacy software interface for Microsoft Windows but can also operate in standalone mode.
With three integrated presets and plethora of customized profiles this unit is capable of controlling your computer cooling system exactly as you want it. Powered by world renown CPUID monitoring library the EK-Ascendacy and it's Microsoft Windows based application is the ultimate solution for any avid computer water cooling enthusiast.
Hardware features:
The unit is now in validation phase where all potential flaws will be ironed out. EK will offer both full- as well as light 5.25" drive bay version without the front facing LCD and interface.
The light version without the front facing LCD will be available by early March 2014, pricing is yet to be announced.
It is worth noting this product is - like most EK Water Blocks products - completely designed and manufactured in Slovenia, Europe!
With three integrated presets and plethora of customized profiles this unit is capable of controlling your computer cooling system exactly as you want it. Powered by world renown CPUID monitoring library the EK-Ascendacy and it's Microsoft Windows based application is the ultimate solution for any avid computer water cooling enthusiast.
- direct drain FET water cooled voltage regulation module (VRM)
- up to 150 W sustained power capable VRM
- standard 6-pin PCI-Express power connector ensures
- control a 4-pin molex / 3-pin DC (up to 40W) or 4-pin PWM capable water pump
- control up to 8 4-pin PWM or 3-pin DC fans (15W each)
- connect any industry standard flow meter (pulse sensing)
- monitor up to 10 thermal probes (NTC thermistor)
- Microsoft Windows based application
- Modern, easy and intuitive user interface
- Custom profile creation, editing and management - from fan hysteresis to flow meter pulse tuning
- CPUID SDK support allows monitoring of all vital parameters of your computer
- Logging function of all parameters
The light version without the front facing LCD will be available by early March 2014, pricing is yet to be announced.
It is worth noting this product is - like most EK Water Blocks products - completely designed and manufactured in Slovenia, Europe!
6 Comments on EK Unveils the EK-Ascendancy Water Cooling Control Board
My current solution is simple:
Sounds awesome, especially for those who demand silence.
Oh... and, it cools the IC power regulators on the board itself! Clever...
Also, they should switch out those Jamicon 85c electrolytics for some some Panasonic or Nichicon 105c rated caps.
PWM devices control their speeds at the device themselves and are only sent a low energy pulse signal to tell it what speed to run at. All this board needs to do is provide that pulse signal. The cooling would be only for standard fans and pumps are controlled by varying voltage (using very wasteful resistors, potentiometers, or VRMs). As far as the power supply to the board, all the PWM pumps I've seen don't even draw power from their 4-pin connector; it is supplied by a separate 4-pin Molex connector, and 8 fans aren't going to draw 150W.
For the past few years I have wanted something that can software control lots of PWM devices. This would work, but I'd estimate it will be over $200 which is well over an acceptable price to me. I'll stick to soldering together $10 worth of electronic components to make my own manual PWM controllers.