Wednesday, January 13th 2021
EK at CES 2021: Active Backplate, New Torque Fittings, Concept Cases!
EK Waterblocks, who have decided to go by EK for the brand presence in the retail stream henceforth, had a stronger showing at the virtual CES 2021 than most other brands, and showcased a good deal of new products amidst their EK Expo ongoing as of this post. The most interesting product to me at least was their upcoming actively cooled backplate solution, which is different from what Aqua Computer has done to date in that it has an actual cold plate and coolant going through a small block on the back rather than just a heatpipe. Now I will mention that Aqua Computer had shown off some renders of their own take of this, but this is the first time a retail solution has been shown off by a company.
EK says that the new backplate offering will come in either acetal or nickel-plexi variants, and will incorporate a thicker terminal that splits coolant flow to the front and back. The backplate, first coming for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080/3090 reference PCB, will make direct contact with the components on the back as well, with freshly conducted internal testing showing VRAM cooling improvements in significant double digits already. The company plans to make this an option for other popular new GPU releases as well, except for the RTX 3090 FE that gets its own bespoke cooling solution with the backplate connected to the coldplate on the front via thermal pads for a more petite, semi-active cooling solution coming up soon. The first active backplate is due to release in a month, with cost on the order of a typical GPU block itself. Click past the break for more from EK at CES 2021!
Fittings are the bread and butter for most PC DIY watercooling companies, and EK has had a massive refresh in the recent year with their Quantum Torque range of fittings. At CES 2021, the company showcased new additions including compression fittings in all colors match their Quantum Magnitude CPU block accents, as well as new female-female angled adapters and T-splitters that look quite sharp if I say so myself. They also showed off a new drain valve fitting with a locking cap and sliding mechanism that takes far less space compared to a typical ball valve fitting, and fits in with the design aesthetic. Finally, we saw new stop plugs in different sizes and heights to cater to different needs, and these all come in their four Torque fitting finishes.
Joining the new fittings were new pump bodies/heatsinks for the Xylem D5 and DDC respectively, with machining from a single chunk of brass that then gets plated in two finishes as seen in the images below. The DDC heatsink is cleaner in aesthetics with fins that visible when installed anymore, and cutouts for the cables in either pump option.
Taking a sharp right turn, there was a concept case with desk/wall mounting options. EK has dipped toes into the case world from time to time, including the EK-Vulture that seemed ahead of its time in hindsight, and the new concept case is an open frame with 4 mm thick aluminium panels that would not look out of place in an InWin catalog. Indeed, EK is still considering manufacturing from a third-party vs. doing it themselves, and are far enough in this thought process to where I expect the case to become reality sooner than later (maybe Q4 this year at the earliest, though). The case differs itself from other such offerings in providing clamp feet that allow installation on desks similar to monitor arms, as well as standard VESA mounts on the back for wall mounting. There are radiator mount hinges not shown in the image below, and the panels are customizable to allow for a reverse ATX motherboard orientation as well.
You can also see sneak peeks of that concept case in the images below, however those are more relevant to the Lian Li O11-D external cooling unit. This is effectively a pedestal from the Caselabs days, in that it screws into the bottom of the case and re-uses the stock feet that you had to remove in the previous step, except given a modern touch throughout with a custom push-fit distro plate for tubing routes in/out and also radiators that can be installed in either side (or both). The distro plate has built-in D5 pump, and comes with a pump block plate if you want to use an internal pump inside the case. I want to see a version sold without the pump in this case, just to save customers money on the secondary pump that is redundant otherwise. EK plans to also sell this as a standalone external cooling box with a roof panel.
Lastly, there was mention of their recently launched Fluid Works workstation PCs, as well as various partner-specific products from AMD, ASUS, Powercolor MSI etc. We expect to hear (and have already heard in some cases) more about these from the partners themselves in due time.
EK says that the new backplate offering will come in either acetal or nickel-plexi variants, and will incorporate a thicker terminal that splits coolant flow to the front and back. The backplate, first coming for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080/3090 reference PCB, will make direct contact with the components on the back as well, with freshly conducted internal testing showing VRAM cooling improvements in significant double digits already. The company plans to make this an option for other popular new GPU releases as well, except for the RTX 3090 FE that gets its own bespoke cooling solution with the backplate connected to the coldplate on the front via thermal pads for a more petite, semi-active cooling solution coming up soon. The first active backplate is due to release in a month, with cost on the order of a typical GPU block itself. Click past the break for more from EK at CES 2021!
36 Comments on EK at CES 2021: Active Backplate, New Torque Fittings, Concept Cases!
The old aphorism of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is quite applicable here.
Would you hold the same view if you received something milled like this or is this also perfectly fine ?
That, my friend, is what we call a false equivalence.
It's incredible that anyone can defend this crap. Bylski has better milling than EK lmao.
Also, how on earth would I be talking about material waste? Swapping out tooling while it's still able to reliably produce parts that are within spec is wasteful. Is it a big deal? Obviously not. But avoiding unnecessary waste is still a good thing.
I'm not specifically defending EK, I'm pointing out that you're making a huge fuss over meaningless details with zero effect on any of the functional aspects of the product (and not even any on the aesthetics, seeing how none of this is visible!), while heaping on assumptions that this is due to laziness or poor craftsmanship when there are other more reasonable explanations for choosing to proceed in that manner.
Ask their support or marketing team and you will get the same answer.
Its idiotic to say the marks are because of worn tooling if every single product has it.
These aren't medical devices, high-end industrial machine parts, aerospace or space travel parts, or anything else requiring those kinds of tolerances.
For the n'th time: unless this has an actually noticeable effect on flow and thermals, it doesn't matter whatsoever, and we should all be thankful that EK doesn't prioritize "perfection" including the inevitable 50-100% price jump that would include.