The German overclocker Roman Hartung, better known as “der8auer”, presented a new water cooling concept at Computex 2019. Instead of individual heat sinks, the so-called der8auer LINC consists of a monoblock that includes the processor, the graphics card and large parts of the mainboard. The concept was presented during the fair with an Asus Dominus Extreme Mainboard.
The idea behind the monoblock originates from the graphics card design, where a single cooler has been supplying GPU, RAM and other components for quite some time. LINC (liquid interconnect cooling) goes one step further. Almost all components such as voltage converters, chipsets and network chips are cooled on the motherboard. Components that cannot be reached directly are connected to the central monoblock via additional heatpipes.
The biggest drawback of this solution is the variety of motherboard layouts that make it impossible to create a monoblock that is compatible with different motherboards. The concept will therefore very probably always remain a small niche product even in the high-end area, which is only available for a few mainboards.
On the pictures published so far only a prototype of LINC can be seen. However, the final version of the already patented product is expected to be launched on the market in a few weeks. Initially, a small series of ten units will be offered for the Asus mainboard, which costs around 2,000 euros.
Further motherboards will follow in the future. According to der8auer LINC should cost about 2.000 Euro . The price includes the monoblock and two graphic card coolers. Since individual adjustments are necessary for the integration of the graphics cards and LINC will therefore only be available as a custom-made product, individual customer wishes such as engravings or colour changes can also be taken into account. Solvent customers should also be able to purchase complete systems with pre-installed LINC.
