Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 1080 Black

[HEXUS]

Hybrid cooling on one of the year's best GPUs.

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[Andy14]

What am I missing ? There's no improvement in performance / any other factor over an air cooled 3rd party card for less money. Yet it adds extra cables, tubes, fans, water & general complexity.

[hellig]

lower temperature, meaning less noise, also the gpu will not deteriorate as fast.

[this_is_gav]

lower temperature, meaning less noise, also the gpu will not deteriorate as fast.

I don't think I've seen a GPU fail for about 12-15 years now, and that's only because I can't remember back further. I've even got one of the known faulty 8600M still in a laptop working away fine, though I appear to be one of few in that regard. I have had a laptop dead on arrival once though.

I've still got cards from eras long gone powering PCs - the work PC I'm typing this on has an old (~2007) HD 3870 that has been recycled from home.

Graphics cards will last far longer than they'll actually be used. Chances are the pump and fan will fail long before the GPU.



Edit: The bigger benefit will be exhausting heat from the case through the radiator, though on the last page of the review Hexus seem to have it as in intake for some reason.

Some 3rd party cards obviously just let most of the hot air back into the case, though in my experience it hasn't had a noticeable effect as a correctly orientated 3rd-party CPU heatsink directs 90% of it straight out of the exhaust fan anyway.

[Andy14]

lower temperature, meaning less noise, also the gpu will not deteriorate as fast.

As Gav pointed out. What a load of tosh that is. This reminds me of the story of the Emperors new clothes (when I was a kid).

[Valantar]

That molex connector makes this card a total joke. A £720 GPU is a premium products. Premium PC components in 2016 do not require molex connectors. How hard would it be to make a 3/4-pin fan connector for the pump on the PCB? Heck, you could go full McGyver and solder it straight to the leads of the 6/8-pin, although that's not exactly elegant.

Ugh.

And for those of you wondering about the point: watercooling modern low-temp/power GPUs is about getting a decent solution to avoiding throttling, maintaining stable temps, exhausting hot air and keeping noise moderate (by using larger fans) while keeping the card relatively small. Modern triple-fan coolers can compete very well on most of those parameters, but they're getting ridiculously large to boot. AIOs avoid dumping the heat of your largest heat source into the case, while keeping the card size moderate/small (look at the Fury X).

[jigger]

You could buy a Fury Pro Du for this money.