Corsair’s Liquid Cooled GTX 980 Ti Video Card
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,617 words · ~8 min read
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now Corsair didn't invent the business model of starting out Hawking RAM sticks
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with shiny heat spreaders on them and then expanding into other product
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categories but what they've certainly done is made an art form out of doing it
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well so while Corsair isn't the first of the companies that made Enthusiast PC
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memory to try to enter the graphics card space the recently bankrupt and acquired
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by tashiba ocz claims that dubious honor
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maybe just maybe they'll be the first one to do it successfully because
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against the odds that's what we have here today the hydro gfx
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gtx980ti a collaborative project between Corsair and MSI to make an all-in-one
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water cooled video card let's find out how it
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having originally been released nearly 6 months ago the gtx980ti is a bit of a
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known quantity at this point so I'm not going to spend too much time on the
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technology but it is worth reiterating that it's a nearly full fat gm200
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Maxwell chip so the same underlying Tech as the Titan X but with a few Kuda cores
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and texture units missing and a mere 6 gigs of gddr5 memory instead of 12 it's
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got a 250 wat TDP and the reference card is clocked at 1,000 MHz base 1075 MHz
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boost with the RAM at 7 GHz regardless
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of what GPU Boost 2.0 is doing to balance The Thermals power consumption
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and core clock speeds and that right there is where Corsair figures their
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value at as something of a PC cooling specialist comes in cooler running
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computer hardware has always been preferable but while in the old days you
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had to manually turn the speeds or overclock your components to take
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advantage of any additional performance Headroom Kepler and Maxwell architecture
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Invidia cards are able to leverage it intelligently on the Fly allowing a
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cooler card to effectively be running at a higher speed more of the time so
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Corsair started then by replacing the reference cards cooler though if you
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ignore the illuminated NSI logo instead of an NVIDIA logo and the braided tube
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sticking out at the top of it I forgive you for not really feeling like they
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changed a whole lot the shape is pretty
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much the same but the metal housing is gone replaced unfortunately by a plastic
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one and the window that used to show aluminum heat sink fins now shows the
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GPU block and pump unit that makes up the all-in-one cooler as well as a large
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metal heat spreader that combined with the rear exhaust blower Fen that hasn't
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been removed from the original design keeps the memory and power delivery
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component cool at the back Corsair has
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added a back plate that thankfully features only a subtle overclocking
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emblem instead of the mish mash of logos on the front and side of the card that
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is probably the result of countless emails between Corsair and MSI product
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management teams back to the rest of the physical tour cooling of the GPU itself
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is handled by a Corsair h55 all-in-one liquid cooling unit with a slim 120 mm
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radiator and one of Corsair's regret L still round frame but thankfully cool
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looking white LED fans overall I'd give
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corser and MSI a B for the coherency of this product looking at it it's not
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really clear who makes it and compared to AMD's Fury X which Powers the fan and
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the pump off the card directly rather than requiring the end user to plug the
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fan into a header on the motherboard or to gigabytes water force 980ti that was
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just announced that uses a non-reference PCB for the card itself
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it feels like while Corsair didn't skimp
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on quality this is a fairly tentative
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let's see how this goes foray into making graphics cards but all of that is
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just judging a book by its cover something I would never recommend doing
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as a computer Enthusiast since good things can sometimes come in very
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unusual packages so let's talk about how
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then we tested the hydro gfx first we
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did away with the open air test bench and installed our x99 Deluxe core I 759
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30k 32 gigs of Vengeance lpx memory and
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ax1200i power supply in a cooler master
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master case 5 Pro case next we had to
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decide what cards this monstrosity really competes with Corsair's marketing
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materials only really compare against a referenced 980 TI and then they apply a
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safe but definitely significant overclock only to their own so while we
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included all of those numbers to make things more interesting we also threw in
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a G1 gaming 980 Ti from Gigabyte with their windforce triple fan cooler and an
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AMD Fury X since it's the only other all-in-one liquid cooled card that we
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have on hand let's start with performance thanks to its aggressive
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outof thebox advertised boost clock of nearly 1300 mahz this is a clear win for
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the hydr gfx across the board although it should be noted that its margin of
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Victory is not as much as you might think it would be and for good reason
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while the hydro gfx and the fury X posted by far the best thermal results
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like we didn't see that one coming not to mention that underload they're
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noticeably quieter than the air cooled cards in a well ventilated case like the
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master case 5 both the hydro Fury and
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gigabytes open air triple fan cooler design were able to achieve well over
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their advertised boost clocks in our test and ended up a near 13 mehz apart
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in our Crisis 3 Skybox thermal and power
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test and there's even more to this story yet GPU temps are one thing but we also
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wanted to see how the Open Air Design would affect the temperatures of the
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rest of the system and grabbed CPU temps and motherboard power delivery temps
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while running our load test with each of the cards and the G1 gaming though
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actually not as much as I expected shows
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in this case the tradeoff that gets made when you opt for an open air cooled
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design versus one that either through rear exhaust directly or with the use of
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a radiator expels heat directly out of
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the case which I guess leads us to the
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conclusion if life were as simple as just buy the best thing with money as a
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complete non-issue then I would be able to recommend the Corsair Hydro gfx
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without any hesitation but life isn't that simple and at a price of
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$120 more than the cheapest reference card on new EG and $70 more than a
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higher tier air cooled card like the G1
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gaming from Gigabyte it does become a bit harder to justify so I'll pose the
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question to you then the audience are you willing to spend a bit more and deal
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with the bulkiness of an AIO cooler attached to your video card in exchange
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for Corsair's legendary support better performance and better thermals for your
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card and your other components or is the
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tax too high let us know Down Below in
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the comments and on that note today's episode sponsor is needfor seat.com
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