Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 980 Ti Black

[HEXUS]

Face-melting performance from a liquid-cooled powerhouse.

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[Plasmastorm]

Folks complained about the Radeon 300 series rebrand but the 980 train keeps on chugging.

Fair enough it's a good card but the surge of these a year or more after the 1st ones makes me wonder is there a backlog of chips they want to shift before a new gen.
Just like when a car manufacturer sells you a car which is just a different model witha new skin/shell on it.

[Tunnah]

Although this level of speed is technically termed "redonkulous", it's not something I'd buy. It just adds more failure points in a product, and in this case, critical ones. Fans can be changed easily, and if outside of warranty, inexpensively too. But if the pump goes on this ? It's not gonna be pretty.

I'm not disparaging the company in anyway whatsoever, just..I'm unlucky ha

[Ferral]

So I take it the people round the HEXUS offices are looking like Emil from the end of Robocop?!

[spacein_vader]

This is an odd product, neither fish nor fowl. If I was going to watercool a GPU (which makes much more sense than for a CPU given their relative TDP these days,) I'd want an entirely watercooled solution, including the VRMs. The extra fan & air cooling give you another point of failure and noise, as well as having overclocking headroom potentially stunted by the air cooled elements.

[bridges009]

Is there a reason these partner video cards only water cool the GPU but not the other heat generating components? Seems like a lame compromise given their premium nature.

[kalniel]

Is there a reason these partner video cards only water cool the GPU but not the other heat generating components? Seems like a lame compromise given their premium nature.

They probably don't need as much cooling, so the HSF is more than enough.

[spacein_vader]

They probably don't need as much cooling, so the HSF is more than enough.

In my experience the VRMs get as hot as the GPU. The point is, why not use one method to cool everything?

[kalniel]

In my experience the VRMs get as hot as the GPU. The point is, why not use one method to cool everything?

I don't know about the 980ti, but in my experience the VRMs don't get anything like as hot as the GPU - quite often you can get away with passive fins and a bit of airflow while the GPU absolutely needs a high contact heatsink and dedicated fan/or water cooling.

[Xlucine]

Temperature during use =/= heat output during use. Whether you can cool them passively depends on how many watts they throw out, and if a bit of extruded aluminium is good enough then companies will take advantage of the big reduction in cost. Cooling them would need either another waterblock (which brings a higher chance of leaks and more expense) or a heatpipe connecting them to the GPU waterblock (which adds cost). Some cards do cool everything with water - the fury X has a second waterblock, and gigabyte's latest 980 with an AIO has a heatpipe to the VRM's