now Corsair didn't invent the business model of starting out Hawking RAM sticks
with shiny heat spreaders on them and then expanding into other product
categories but what they've certainly done is made an art form out of doing it
well so while Corsair isn't the first of the companies that made Enthusiast PC
memory to try to enter the graphics card space the recently bankrupt and acquired
by tashiba ocz claims that dubious honor
maybe just maybe they'll be the first one to do it successfully because
against the odds that's what we have here today the hydro gfx
gtx980ti a collaborative project between Corsair and MSI to make an all-in-one
water cooled video card let's find out how it
performs freshbooks is the super simple invoicing solution that lets you get
organized save time and get paid faster
check out the link in the video description to try it for free now
having originally been released nearly 6 months ago the gtx980ti is a bit of a
known quantity at this point so I'm not going to spend too much time on the
technology but it is worth reiterating that it's a nearly full fat gm200
Maxwell chip so the same underlying Tech as the Titan X but with a few Kuda cores
and texture units missing and a mere 6 gigs of gddr5 memory instead of 12 it's
got a 250 wat TDP and the reference card is clocked at 1,000 MHz base 1075 MHz
boost with the RAM at 7 GHz regardless
of what GPU Boost 2.0 is doing to balance The Thermals power consumption
and core clock speeds and that right there is where Corsair figures their
value at as something of a PC cooling specialist comes in cooler running
computer hardware has always been preferable but while in the old days you
had to manually turn the speeds or overclock your components to take
advantage of any additional performance Headroom Kepler and Maxwell architecture
Invidia cards are able to leverage it intelligently on the Fly allowing a
cooler card to effectively be running at a higher speed more of the time so
Corsair started then by replacing the reference cards cooler though if you
ignore the illuminated NSI logo instead of an NVIDIA logo and the braided tube
sticking out at the top of it I forgive you for not really feeling like they
changed a whole lot the shape is pretty
much the same but the metal housing is gone replaced unfortunately by a plastic
one and the window that used to show aluminum heat sink fins now shows the
GPU block and pump unit that makes up the all-in-one cooler as well as a large
metal heat spreader that combined with the rear exhaust blower Fen that hasn't
been removed from the original design keeps the memory and power delivery
component cool at the back Corsair has
added a back plate that thankfully features only a subtle overclocking
emblem instead of the mish mash of logos on the front and side of the card that
is probably the result of countless emails between Corsair and MSI product
management teams back to the rest of the physical tour cooling of the GPU itself
is handled by a Corsair h55 all-in-one liquid cooling unit with a slim 120 mm
radiator and one of Corsair's regret L still round frame but thankfully cool
looking white LED fans overall I'd give
corser and MSI a B for the coherency of this product looking at it it's not
really clear who makes it and compared to AMD's Fury X which Powers the fan and
the pump off the card directly rather than requiring the end user to plug the
fan into a header on the motherboard or to gigabytes water force 980ti that was
just announced that uses a non-reference PCB for the card itself
it feels like while Corsair didn't skimp
on quality this is a fairly tentative
let's see how this goes foray into making graphics cards but all of that is
just judging a book by its cover something I would never recommend doing
as a computer Enthusiast since good things can sometimes come in very
unusual packages so let's talk about how
then we tested the hydro gfx first we
did away with the open air test bench and installed our x99 Deluxe core I 759
30k 32 gigs of Vengeance lpx memory and
ax1200i power supply in a cooler master
master case 5 Pro case next we had to
decide what cards this monstrosity really competes with Corsair's marketing
materials only really compare against a referenced 980 TI and then they apply a
safe but definitely significant overclock only to their own so while we
included all of those numbers to make things more interesting we also threw in
a G1 gaming 980 Ti from Gigabyte with their windforce triple fan cooler and an
AMD Fury X since it's the only other all-in-one liquid cooled card that we
have on hand let's start with performance thanks to its aggressive
outof thebox advertised boost clock of nearly 1300 mahz this is a clear win for
the hydr gfx across the board although it should be noted that its margin of
Victory is not as much as you might think it would be and for good reason
while the hydro gfx and the fury X posted by far the best thermal results
like we didn't see that one coming not to mention that underload they're
noticeably quieter than the air cooled cards in a well ventilated case like the
master case 5 both the hydro Fury and
gigabytes open air triple fan cooler design were able to achieve well over
their advertised boost clocks in our test and ended up a near 13 mehz apart
in our Crisis 3 Skybox thermal and power
test and there's even more to this story yet GPU temps are one thing but we also
wanted to see how the Open Air Design would affect the temperatures of the
rest of the system and grabbed CPU temps and motherboard power delivery temps
while running our load test with each of the cards and the G1 gaming though
actually not as much as I expected shows
in this case the tradeoff that gets made when you opt for an open air cooled
design versus one that either through rear exhaust directly or with the use of
a radiator expels heat directly out of
the case which I guess leads us to the
conclusion if life were as simple as just buy the best thing with money as a
complete non-issue then I would be able to recommend the Corsair Hydro gfx
without any hesitation but life isn't that simple and at a price of
$120 more than the cheapest reference card on new EG and $70 more than a
higher tier air cooled card like the G1
gaming from Gigabyte it does become a bit harder to justify so I'll pose the
question to you then the audience are you willing to spend a bit more and deal
with the bulkiness of an AIO cooler attached to your video card in exchange
for Corsair's legendary support better performance and better thermals for your
card and your other components or is the
tax too high let us know Down Below in
the comments and on that note today's episode sponsor is needfor seat.com
makers of the maxnomic chairs that you've probably seen in a lot of our
behind the-scenes videos on the W show and well pretty much anywhere that I
Luke or any other member of my team puts our butts down they've got a wide
variety of sizes and styles available whether you're my size or luk size and
whether you want something you know just black and plain and professional looking
for the boardroom or your more into vibrant outstanding colors and this is
cool if you follow them over at need for seat on Twitter I'll have that Linked In
the video description you'll be the first to know the details of their upcoming Black Friday promotion so if
you've been thinking about upgrading your gaming chair these guys are awesome
and recently outfitted our whole office with their chairs and we absolutely love
them so stay tuned and check out what kind of special deals they'll have
available so thanks for watching guys if you like this video then you know wait
no if you disliked it then do that and then if you liked it do this one not the
other way around if you liked the video get
subscribed even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to
shop at Amazon instructions up there buying a cool shirt like this one or
with a direct monthly contribution through our community Forum now that you're done doing all that stuff you're
probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top
right corner to check out my video where I basically declare Steam OS to be a
complete dead end am I right am I not I
guess you have to watch the video and find out well that won't tell you if I'm
right that'll just tell you what I think you'll have to decide for yourself if I'm right