EVGA's EPower Board offers replacement VRMs for those who don't mind a bit of hair-raising soldering.
EVGA has announced a product that should get the hardcore overclockers salivating: an add-on voltage regulation (VRM) board for motherboards and graphics cards.
Dubbed the EVGA EPower Board, the add-in VRM board is designed to replace stock voltage regulation modules on high-power devices in order to allow for even more power to be shoved through; a critical part of extreme overclocking.
According to EVGA's figures, the EPower board can run at a VCORE adjustment range of 800mV to 2000mV at a current of up to 400A, or a VDIMM adjustment range of 1000mV to 5000mV at up to 80A. To put those figures into context: EVGA recommends a 600W power supply with 42A on the 12V rail per EPower board used in the system.
Before you get excited about the potential of the board, there's a catch: the system is hardly plug-and-play. Those who have bought the board are expected to solder it directly to the motherboard or graphics card of their choice, replacing the existing VRMs with a connection to the EPower board. With the installation instructions (
PDF) advising users to cut PCB traces to disable on-board regulator modules, it's a hair-raising - and warranty-trashing - experience.
The board itself gets a little warm, too: despite a hefty heatsink, EVGA recommends the use of forced air cooling via an 80mm or 120mm fan as a minimum and warns that those using extreme cooling systems like liquid nitrogen should position the EPower board well away from any possible condensation points unless they want to see the world's most expensive indoor firework display.
Thus far, EVGA hasn't confirmed UK pricing, but the EPower board is available in the US priced at $99.99. The first early revision boards were shipped to customers late last year, with some
eyebrow-raising results.
Do you think the EPower board could be a worthy addition to an overclocker's arsenal, or is EVGA just showing off? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
11 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplySent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
I looks interesting and I would love to see someone from here use it!
And Longweight, has already been done ;)
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=219478
Edit:
http://kingpincooling.com/forum/showthread.php?t=744
You can see how long it's been in development, and an example of him doing the same thing just with another card, rather than a purpose built device.
Looking at some of the soldering that those guys in the link have done really makes me cringe.
Now, if eVGA could make this a truly modular design without any soldering required, then imagine how motherboard design could be taken. First the VRM's, then the CPU socket and RAM sockets all on daughterboards. It'd be like 1989 again, but this time with enthusiast class kit allowing us to seriously customise kit to suit.
I know it eeks of diversity which adds cost, but done right I think this is the nugget of a genius idea. After all, i had the same one :) ...sort of
I would love this sort of thing to be able to be bought and slotted on to the board's meaning we could choose what we run on the board's in term's of VRM's etc.
results and lots of pics on bit-tech forum