ASUS Quietly Revises ROG Strix 1080 Ti PCB Design, EKWB Warns

[Raevenlord]

ASUS has seemingly revised the PCB design of their ROG Strix GTX 1080 Ti graphics card in such a way that it has introduced compatibility issues with already-released custom waterblocks. The warning from Ek WaterBlocks (a silent one as well) comes via an update to their EK-MLC Phoenix GPU Module FC1080 GTX Ti, and EK-FC1080 GTX Ti waterblock modules product pages, where EK wrote that "Due to changes in the PCB design, ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards in the following S/N range are not compatible with EK-FC1080 GTX Ti Strix full cover water blocks: HBYVCM064817- HBYVCM999999; HCYVCM000001- HCYVCM059975".

Product revisions are a dime a dozen (particularly in motherboards). However, it's relatively rare that changes are enough to render cooling solutions completely incompatible with the new design. Granted, ASUS saw something worth some additional engineering, and went on to do it, so users looking towards the acquisition of a new GPU waterblock for their ASUS ROG Strix GTX 1080 Ti graphics card should just look closely to the serial numbers on their graphics card packaging. Based on the range of serial numbers, graphics cards manufactured on or after November 2017 are the ones rendered incompatible with EKWB's purpose-built GPU waterblocks, so users purchasing graphics cards after this time-frame should take particular heed.



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[the54thvoid]

"Asus quietly revises..." makes it sound sinister. Board manufacturers do revisions quite often. It's up to the water block manufacturers to do the warnings. So as EK have done, it's not really a news story about Asus, it's instead more of a QC issue for EK.

 

[RejZoR]

Gigabyte is most known for revisions, but they also mark them in most obvious way (the Rev.X next to product names).

 

[hyp36rmax]

I remember when XFX did the same thing with the HD7970's a while back and everyone lost their minds.

 

[Chaitanya]

"Asus quietly revises..." makes it sound sinister. Board manufacturers do revisions quite often. It's up to the water block manufacturers to do the warnings. So as EK have done, it's not really a news story about Asus, it's instead more of a QC issue for EK.

All the manufacturers in PC industry do some product revisions over the lifetime depending on availability of components. Gigabyte and Corsair clearly mark rev no on their products while others dont. Its just EK warning customers to check serial no before purchasing product causing unwanted RMA from the process.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

EK did warn, after all... Everyone has to double-triple-check the serials before getting a waterblock.