AMD's Radeon VII Vega 20 graphics card is a strange beast. It's a 7nm die shrink of AMD's Vega architecture with all of the savings made with that reduction dumped straight into clock speed. Radeon VII runs fast, but as with the first generation cards, it runs hot and it needs a lot of power. That's meant that even the triple-fan air-cooled standard edition of the card has its limits and they're mostly thermal.
But now EK has a new Vector waterblock for the card and it cools not only the core, but the VRM as well, making it an all encompassing solution for those wanting to add a Radeon VII to their custom waterloop. The EKWB Vector Radeon VII water block has the typical EK styling that combines clear acrylic with LED lighting for some fancy effects and comes in four distinct versions. There's a copper and acetal version for $130, with additional plexiglass, nickel and backplate enhancements increasing the cost to $200 depending on your preferences.
Why would anyone spend so much on an already expensive $700 card? The most obvious answer is that running the card on water makes it much cooler and much quieter. That means it will increase its operating life significantly and gaming without a card blaring away inside your PC is far nicer.
However, for those that want additional performance, that watercooling unlocks a lot more thermal potential. As we saw in GamersNexus custom AIO watercooling solution, you can bring the Radeon VII to well excess of 1080 Ti and RTX 2080 performance with water and powermodding, but that was with hardware that wasn't designed for the job. With a bespoke waterblock, we would expect to see improved cooling (far greater with hefty radiators) and therefore improved clocks.
It's possible that in some games and benchmarks, the Radeon VII could rival RTX 2080 Ti levels of performance, but several hundred dollars less. That's an exciting prospect.
