Asustek Launches Water-Cooled Graphics Card

Taiwanese hardware maker Asustek Computer Inc. has begun shipping a water-cooled graphics card that can help lower a PC's internal temperature, while improving graphics performance.

The AquaTank EN8800GTX graphics board is based on a Nvidia Corp. GeForce 8800GTX graphics chip and packs 768M bytes of high-speed DDR3 (double data rate 3) memory. According to an Asustek executive manning the company's booth at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, the AquaTank cards are currently in production and will soon be available.

The water-cooling system helps to keep the graphics chip running 12 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than other 8800GTX boards, Asustek said. That translates into a performance gain of around 11 percent, the company said.

Specific information about pricing and availability of the AquaTank graphics card was not available.