Any reason not to use founders edition cards?

[Hendrickson]

I'm getting ready to start a new water cooled build, and was looking to use a Vega 56 for it. However I'm not sure even Lisa Su can get her hands on one right now, so that leaves me looking at either a 1070, or 1070ti (leaning toward the ti).

You can pick up the founders edition cards strait from Nvidia cheaper than buying an aftermarket card, and if I'm removing the cooler anyway, is there a reason not to go this route? I will be doing some overclocking I'm sure, but I'm not looking for anything extreme. This will be in an InWin 301 case, so it's really more about just keeping up with the cooling in such a small case rather than pushing the limits of overclocking.

 

[n0x1ous]

Founders edition is preferred if you're going to put a block on it. Most full cover blocks will only fit the founders edition

 

[Hendrickson]

Cool. I'm going to give the Vega 56 a couple more weeks to show up in stock at a reasonable price. I'm also hoping for world peace, and to make enough to retire by then. I'm really not sure which of these 3 things is the most likely.

 

[rondocap]

I actually prefer the FE sometimes, since they blow all of the hot air out of the case, it can be good if you have certain setups.

 

[Guru]

FE editions are basically reference models, they usually come with less power phases, weaker capacitors and worse cooling. You'd be changing the cooling so you are removing one of the weaknesses, but it has two more.

Not that more power phases doesn't automatically mean higher OC potential or stuff, but its nice not to potentially be limited by that. Better build custom GPU's usually have more power phases, better and more capacitors and higher quality VRM's.

 

[Jackie60]

I've had Titan Pascal SLI and currently running 1080ti all founders edition and they all have run 1987-2012 MHZ pretty consistently when gaming, yes they're noisier but the clocks seem to stay at that level all day with very occasional very short duration slow downs (typically down to 1947 or thereabouts) for 10 -30 seconds every 30-60 mins. From what I've seen almost all AIB boards seem to slow to high teens after about 30 mins so all that heat in the case soon warms up the GPU and reduces clocks significantly. Obviously I have a nice high fan setting but as I said the noise doesn't bother me.

 

[Carfax83]

Founder's edition is only worth it if it has the vapor chamber. I don't think the base GTX 1070 has the vapor chamber. The GTX 1070 ti does though.

The reference cooler in the high end NVidia cards are the best vapor chamber coolers available for a GPU. I hadn't used a GPU with a reference cooler until I bought my Titan Xp. Before then I had been using GPUs with open air coolers for years, including some of the best ones like the Zotac Extreme series. However, the vapor chamber cooling in my Titan Xp impressed me with it's cooling ability and noise levels, so much so that I made a post about it. And while the vapor chamber in the GTX 1070 Ti isn't as good as the 1080 Ti and Titan Xp's though, but it's still really good; much better than AMD's offerings.