According to reports from VideoCardz, Gigabyte is readying an Aorus-branded AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card equipped with a water block. The Aorus Xtreme WaterForce WB Radeon RX 6900 XT will feature multiple addressable RGB LEDs and will be aimed at those who already have a custom liquid cooling system (LCS). Right now details are sparse, so take them with a pinch of salt.
Gigabyte's Aorus Xtreme WaterForce WB Radeon RX 6900 XT will carry AMD's top-of-the-range Navi 21 GPU with 5,120 stream processors, though it is unknown whether the GPU will come in its XTX variant (with certain limitations for clocks and voltages) or in the unlocked XTXH version with no limits. Exact specifications of the board are unknown at this point, reports VideoCardz.
Just like Gigabyte's Aorus Radeon RX 6900 XT Master 16G, the upcoming Aorus Xtreme WaterForce WB Radeon RX 6900 XT features three eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors that can deliver up to 450W of power to the card but right now there are no details on actual power requirements. Since we have no idea which GPU version the card uses, it is hard to make guesses about exact clocks that can be expected.
Gigabyte's Aorus WaterForce water block has a transparent acrylic cover and seems to be slightly more than one slot thick. Therefore, the card still comes with a dual-slot bracket. Traditionally for custom water blocks, this one has multiple integrated addressable RGB LEDs. As for outputs, they are pretty standard: two DisplayPort 1.4 and two HDMI 2.1.
When it comes to launches of new graphics cards, Gigabyte's usual strategy is to release reference boards first, then follow up with a custom design, and then proceed with models featuring a liquid cooling solution. This was the case with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, but as far as AMD's Radeon RX 6800/6900-series is concerned, Gigabyte just released three custom cards with the Aorus brand (RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT) and never offered anything with liquid cooling. But at least it now looks that Gigabyte's liquid-cooled RDNA2 product is on the way. All we need to know now are when to expect it, and how much it will cost.
