If you are going to custom water cool your gpu does the brand matter?

[hunkeelin]

Does the brand matters at all if you are going to custom cool it anyways? E.g msi,zotac,gigabyte,asus etc... Some brand clock the gpu higher but if I am correct, they simply clock it higher and sell it to us. The higher price from each brand is probably because of the 1) brand 2) their cooling solution. Right?

Thanks

 

[Spanners]

Does the brand matters at all if you are going to custom cool it anyways? E.g msi,zotac,gigabyte,asus etc... Some brand clock the gpu higher but if I am correct, they simply clock it higher and sell it to us. The higher price from each brand is probably because of the 1) brand 2) their cooling solution. Right?

Thanks

There may be some binning involved for brands that sell factory overclocked models, can't be sure of that but I'd assume. The VRM circuitry is also higher quality/more robust on some cards than others, and assuming you'll be pushing the card hard on water that can be a factor. You have to make sure you're getting a water-block that suits the custom card of course.

Also memory brands can be different between cards usually Hynix or Samsung are the desired ICs. Some top-end cards like the EVGA classified also offer more voltage adjustment than standard cards.

 

[WittyRemark]

Nope.
Unless you're going to overvolt+ overclock the card like crazy, then you might wanna go for a better binned PCB with high quality components.
*please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Shmee]

Also warranties differ from brand to brand when it comes to removing the stock cooler.

 

[Elfear]

There may be some binning involved for brands that sell factory overclocked models, can't be sure of that but I'd assume. The VRM circuitry is also higher quality/more robust on some cards than others, and assuming you'll be pushing the card hard on water that can be a factor. You have to make sure you're getting a water-block that suits the custom card of course.

Also memory brands can be different between cards usually Hynix or Samsung are the desired ICs. Some top-end cards like the EVGA classified also offer more voltage adjustment than standard cards.

+1

The MSI Lightning and similar high-end cards have excellent power circuitry which makes a difference when pushing a card to the limit. I tested a reference 290 on water and a stock 780 Lightning and they behaved very differently when overclocked. The Lightning was very stable and smooth up to it's limit whereas the reference card was very tempermental near the limit. Different architechtures of course but I think a lot of their "personalities" had to do with the hardware quality.

The other factor is which card you are thinking of buying. Watercooling and card quality are more important for the Nvidia 700 series and AMD Tahiti and Hawaii since both use a decent amount of power. Watercooling will have less of a benefit on the Nvidia 600 and 900 series cards.