Hybrid water-cooled Titan X cards being released

[JDG1980]

Both EVGA and Zotac have announced hybrid water-cooled versions of the Titan X. The EVGA card looks to be a nicer design, and comes with a bigger overclock (1241 MHz!) The EVGA card is going to sell for $1099 (a $100 premium), with pricing on the Zotac as yet unannounced.

Existing Titan X owners can buy a EVGA water cooling kit for their card. It looks like the kit is re-using the existing blower to handle the VRM cooling. I wonder if this kit will work with the reference GTX 980 Ti as well?

Although not said in so many words, it's probably safe to assume that the release of these products is designed as a pre-emptive strike against AMD's upcoming Fiji. If, as some of the charts indicate, the stock liquid-cooled Fiji card beats a standard Titan X by 5% or so, then a liquid-cooled Titan X running at 1200 MHz or more would likely reclaim the performance crown for Nvidia.

 

[96Firebird]

I wonder if we'll finally see the Inno3D iChill GTX Titan X being sold. It was teased when the Titan X was first released, but I've never seen one in the wild...

 

[Eymar]

Bought two of the kits (since 980 kits never seem to be in stock) and plan to reuse the Titan X shroud like this guy did here: http://forums.evga.com/FindPost/2333482 (sucker for the LEDs on the Titan cooler). I would love to do custom water cooling as performance and looks would be better, just not liking how much time it would take.

 

[boed]

Did anyone ever do a good review on the EVGA Titan X hybrid? I saw a random review of a standard titan X and it was LOUD!

 

[alcoholbob]

I had two Titan X Hybrids. The stock fan is loud as hell. The problem is the radiator is extremely dense, which means most fans will have no shot in hell of pushing enough air through to keep the rad cool. I tried the Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP-15 and Noctua NF-F12 and both had the cards running at 91C and throttling within about 20-30 minutes.

The only solution I found was the Noctua low noise adapter on the stock fan, which cuts the rpms by about a third, and still gave about 90% of the cooling performance. But its not quiet by any stretch of the imagination. From all the reviews I've seen (and personal experience) the quietest cooler, air or water is still the EVGA ACX Cooler, followed by the MSI Gaming 6 cooler.

 

[boed]

Thanks for the info. I was looking to see if there was an EVGA ACX cooler (my current older 780 has this) but I didn't see that as an option for some reason (unless you add it yourself).