One important point for an AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 waterblock:
Please make sure the card is actively cooled on
both sides, not just on the GPU side with a passive backplate on the rear.
The R9700 has memory chips on both sides of the PCB, and especially under sustained AI/compute workloads the memory temperatures can become quite high. It would make very little sense to design a full-cover waterblock that actively cools the GPU and only half of the VRAM while the memory chips on the back side are left to a normal backplate.
For a card like the AI PRO R9700, which is specifically designed for long-running professional and AI workloads, proper cooling of the rear-side VRAM is much more important than on a typical gaming card.
Ideally, the solution should therefore use either:
- an active backplate with water cooling, or
- another design that directly transfers heat from the rear-side memory into the liquid cooling loop.
A standard passive backplate would be a missed opportunity here. If I install a waterblock on this card, I would expect the complete VRAM configuration to be properly cooled, not just the chips located on the GPU side.
Considering the temperatures these cards can reach during sustained compute workloads, I think dual-sided cooling should really be part of the design from the beginning.
