As reported by hardwareLuxx, water cooling manufacturer Bykski has created a water block for Intel's new Arc A380 graphics card, known as the I-GNA380-X. For a graphics card that is about as power-hungry as a GTX 1650, this new water block is as overkill as it gets for a 75W card. Nonetheless, it is a compact block with single-slot support and will make the (mostly broken) Arc A380 look like a fast, premium graphics card - or one of our Best GPUs, with high-quality materials and RGB lighting.
For reference, this block is only designed for the Gunnir Arc A380 Photon, and will not work with any other A380 AIB partner cards.
The block itself is made out of nickel-plated copper and sealed with an acrylic see-thru cover. The block will cool three components on the A380, the GPU core, video memory, and power delivery system. It also features a backplate which we presume will cool some of the rear side PCB components, and should add some additional bling to the graphics card. Speaking of which, the water block also includes RGB lighting, which lights up the entire acrylic cover to show off your water supply and the block inside.
As previously mentioned, the block does turn the Gunnir card into a single-slot card, so this block can be functionally useful for the very very few people who need to shoehorn an Arc A380 into a single-slot machine.
We don't know how well this water block will cool, but it's safe to say it is incredibly overkill, and temperatures will certainly not be a problem on the Arc A380 even with its stock Gunnir cooler.
But, the first problem you will have is getting your GPU up to temperature in the first place. Intel's Arc GPUs are facing many problems, many of which include driver issues. In previous reports, we've seen benchmarks of Intel's Arc A380 where the GPU never hit its rated power specification, or anywhere close to that.
More recent reviews of the card seem to not have this issue, but the card still suffers stability issues, from immature drivers and the A380 still suffers from bad performance as well, depending on the game.
So for better or for worse, the Bykski block will be largely useless until the Arc A380 gets its reliability issues fixed and finally gets sold outside of China.
