Select ASRock Motherboards Will Feature Waterproof Coating
It appears that a number of ASRock's upcoming Haswell motherboards might feature a waterproof coating, although no details have been given as to how the coating would actually be applied and what purpose it would serve in practice.
Earlier, we already showed you that ASRock was working on better onboard sound codecs for its upcoming Haswell motherboards. Now we bring you yet another interesting feature that's worth having a look at.
It appears that ASRock will have five key features that will be on its A-Style Haswell motherboards. These features include Purity Sound, HDMI-in, Wireless 802.11ac, Home Cloud, and most notably, a Waterproof by Conformal Coating.
The last listed feature, the Waterproof by Conformal Coating, is one of the most intriguing features of all. While some of us might question the true purpose of such a coating, it can be very interesting for hardcore overclockers. Yes, we can all be careful not to spill a cup of water over our motherboards, but as humans, there is little we can do to go against the force of nature and stop water from condensing on a motherboard when it gets so cold because we use liquid nitrogen to cool it while we're pushing those ultra-high frequencies.
Sadly, ASRock has revealed little information as to how it will apply the coating. It remains unknown whether the coating will only cover the PCB or all the chips as well. This, of course, is quite important since it will make the difference between the coating actually serving a useful purpose or simply being another marketing gimmick.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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bambiboom Here's a wild guess as to the purpose for waterproof coating on a motherboard > has a liquid CPU cooling system ever leaked ?Reply
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nevilence I do tend to keep my coffee warm by placing it straight on my cpu, also works to disipate heat, this may proove useful to me =PReply -
MANOFKRYPTONAK 8 core hswell-e with waterproof components for liquid cooling and extreme overclocking. Could I coat my gpu too?Reply -
Hazle http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/the-internet-demanded-partially-scientific-testing-of-ultraeverdry-in-hd/Reply
soooo... they're just gonna spray a layer of this? -
nevilence I do tend to keep my coffee warm by placing it straight on my cpu, also works to disipate heat, this may proove useful to me =PReply -
MANOFKRYPTONAK 10774944 said:http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/the-internet-demanded-partially-scientific-testing-of-ultraeverdry-in-hd/
soooo... they're just gonna spray a layer of this?
I dont think that would be good for the components... -
InvalidError A board-wide extra thickness of conformal coating may also be useful for oil-immersion cooling. A rather neat though messy concept.Reply -
Hazle 10774971 said:10774944 said:http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/the-internet-demanded-partially-scientific-testing-of-ultraeverdry-in-hd/
soooo... they're just gonna spray a layer of this?
I dont think that would be good for the components...
it's non-conductive, FYI. their FAQ was pretty vague on how long it'd lasts though, but the major factor that results in the coating losing it's effectiveness is abrasive force, and is supposed to last longer inside a home environment than outside. another con is that it dries out to a supposed translucent layer, so i'm expecting it to look like it's all covered in spunk if this was the case. -
mariush Gigabyte had problems in India with humidity entering between layers of the pcb (mb pcs have 6-10 layers or more) and causing shorts. They had to use fiber glass woven in another pattern to slow down the speed of humidity penetration and reduce the number of boards returned.Reply
With Haswell it may be the case that more integration and the lower heat dissipated by the cpu makes them able to reduce the number of layers on the board which results into thinner boards.
It may be a move on their part save a couple of dollars on pcb reducing the layers by spending half a dollar or less for conformal coating which would make the board more resistant to flexing.
Also, since Haswell has much lower power modes (using little power on idle), the coating may help with reducing emi coming from video cards and the VRMs.
Anyway, just guesses.