ASUS Poseidon GTX 780
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,722 words · ~8 min read
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The Cooler Master glacer 240l CPU Cooler delivers the convenience of an
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all-in-one and the performance of a custom water cooler click now to learn
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more now the last time I reviewed a hybrid air/water cooled graphics card
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was back in 2007 when I was doing some
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guest writing for Hardware con.com under the pseudonym missile proall and I
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reviewed The Cooler Master Hydra 8800 since then both I and the concept of
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developing a heat sink that also works well as a water block have grown up
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quite a bit with a Seuss leading the charge in a big way with several of
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their recent Rog series motherboards featuring hybrid cooled designs that
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allow the end user to choose whether they want air cooling or water cooling
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now the first reaction to a hybrid
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design that you can use either way from a purist perspective is well then it
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probably sucks at both and in many cases that's probably right but let's take a
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closer look at ausa's Poseidon GTX 780
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before we finish judging it ehy all right so it comes clocked at a bog
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standard 1,6 MHz boost clock with a bog
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standard 3 gigs of RAM and support for all the usual NVIDIA Technologies
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including GYN Cuda SLI physx gam stream GeForce experience with Shadow play and
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future direct X12 support but like many non-reference cards the differentiation
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point of this guy right here is in the attention to detail given to it by the
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board maker the card features a 10 phase
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power design with a susu's premium dig plus vrm and better componentry
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including their super alloy power phases which promise longer lifetime cooler
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operation better overclocking and no coil wine on the front we find a couple
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of 90 mm fans with a susus dust proof design that keeps dust out of the
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bearings for a longer lifespan other than the slightly more aggressive Rog
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themed shroud though there's really not much to indicate here that this is a
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thinly disguised wolf under the sheep's clothing onto IO we've got two DVI ports
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in HDMI port and a DisplayPort Port allowing up to three monitors and NVIDIA
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surround with an additional auxiliary display and the SLI connectors at the
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top support two three and four-way SLI configurations at the bottom of the card
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the PCIe connector is a 16x gen 3 connector but it's not until we get
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around to the back here that things start to get interesting that brushed
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aluminum back plate marginally improves cool but more importantly looks
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absolutely Beast and the illuminated Rog
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logo on the top won't hurt matters either then what's this bam just got
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real industry standard G1 quarter Barb
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sockets looks like isus has learned a thing or two from their years of
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integrating water cooling on motherboards standards are there for a
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reason they improve compatibility and even allow us to put sexy red right
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angle fittings from bits power on this Beast
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H finishing up on the outside of the card we've got an inverted six pin and 8
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Pin power connector and I hope they start doing this on all of their cards
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it actually makes me wonder why I accepted the terrible ergonomics of the
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standard connectors pressing the clip with my thumb is much easier than
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pressing it with my index finger flipped around the other way that's a really cool idea all right so now let's talk
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about what's under the hood of what assus calls a direct c2o cooler its
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Vapor chamber and water Channel design is in my mind the most Innovative thing
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about this card and where the performance you're going to see later really comes from a vapor chamber is
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basically a pancake shaped heat pipe that spreads heat out across its surface
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they're expensive to begin with and one with an embedded water channel in it
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must have cost a fortune to design and implement but it's a great solution to
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the problem that Cooler Master had all those years ago how do you get water
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close to the heat being given off by the GPU core without seriously hurting the
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performance of your air cooling solution for the customers who aren't using water
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yet Cooler Master just put a water Channel next to a heat pipe but that's
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not a lot of contact area for heat exchange and this is a much more elegant
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solution is it perfect no it'll be more
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restrictive than a normal full cover block but it gives the user the
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flexibility to go air now and water later without spending a bunch and still
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realizing a big part of the performance boost that you can get by switching to
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liquid cooling to help the vapor chamber ASUS put three additional heat pipes
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between it and the more distant parts of the aluminum fin array this helps carry
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some heat out to the second fan which with some help from the large diecast
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unisync that's sitting on the top of the card here cools the vrm area as well as
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helping out with the GPU now I hate to do this to you guys but before I hand
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off to Luke I have a sponsor message for you one that you might actually be very
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interested in this right here my friends is the lobera ultimate from Torro it's a
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fully mechanical keyboard using whichever flavor of kale switches you
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prefer with almost the entire keyboard being programmable with remapped keys or
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macros some handy thumb macro buttons below the space bar media Keys a
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built-in USB hub and audio pass through and onboard memory will support for up
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to five profiles but watch this shiz
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because it's about to get crazy up in here hold on a second hold on a
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second whoa did I just blow your mind
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because this mechanical keyboard also has individual key RGB backlighting that
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can vary in brightness pulse and I mean who cares what else it does it's a
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solidly built RGB backlit mechanical keyboard only the second one I've ever
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laid eyes on and the first one you can actually buy with full RGB backlighting
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look at me changing profiles I'm all up in my profile changing Biz I can dance
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all day I can dance all day anyway check out the link in the video description to
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check out pricing and maybe pick one up I recommend using the six key rollover
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mode for optimal compatibility and the included extra USB plug to get up to 2
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and2 amps of power to your USB hub for faster phone charging and better
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operation with whatever power hungry peripherals you might be using all right
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so the weit's over over to Luke for some sexy and
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provocative uh graphics card results all
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right guys welcome to the performance review of our 780 Poseidon this card as
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you know is both air and water cooled capable so when you're looking at the
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dock remember to look at both the air and water cooled rows for this card as
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the core clock speeds are definitely different in terms of platform we had to
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change things up a little bit as we're water cooling this card so we wanted it
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to be on the same bench as all the other cars that were testing so in terms of
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CPU we're running a 3770k and in terms of RAM we're running 8 gigs of RAM at
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1600 MHz and then as you know the gpus vary and you can see all of their clock
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speeds again in the overclocking dock linked below this video in terms of tips
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for overclocking there isn't a ton to say this wasn't a super complicated car
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to overclock although one thing that stood out a lot was how much GPU boost
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can skew things the second you put this card on water it's immediately a lot
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better and you can play with it a little bit more as you'll have more Headroom
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thermally even if you have your thermal cap set at 95° and you're not getting
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anywhere close to there my my load temperatures for this card under air
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were about 77 and then with a thermal cap of 95 and then when I went to water
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load went down to about 45 but then I had a lot more head room to play with
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which is kind of funky GPU boost can do that so just remember that if you're
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overclocking this card in terms of performance it did really well it's a
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higher Bend card than a reference card you'll see so it's just usually
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automatically better and then also underwater it gains more performance
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there one thing that's really nice about this card is the versatility of both
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because I was able to take this air cool it Benchmark it like that strap two
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tubes to it test it underwater it worked perfectly fine and then go right back to
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Air and there was no real issues one thing to note if you're going to do that
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is to drain the card before you go back to air as you don't want any pressure
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problems with that water heating up in the closed system once those plugs are
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screwed on either way guys that's about it thank you for watching this video on
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the 780 Platinum if you want to see all of our lineus tips video be sure to
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subscribe right here on YouTube and comment below if you have anything
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interesting to say about this air water hybrid cooling setup like dislike
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favorite share all that fancy stuff and if you want to go to The Forum to
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comment because there's usually a better discussion going on there and you don't
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like the ads that are on the Forum be sure to contribute and then that's about
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it thank you guys for watching and I'll see you next time