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Bare cards

BubbySoup

BubbySoup

BubbySoup

Soldato
Joined
22 Nov 2003
Posts
3,094
Location
Cardiff
Why hasn't a manufacturer thought of doing this?

We can buy cards with all kinds of custom coolers on, and some manufacturers will even sell you a card with a water block pre-fitted, so why won't they sell us bare cards?

Anyone who has fitted a custom air cooler or water block to a GPU will know it is only marginally more complicated than fitting a custom CPU cooler. In fact, with some of the reviews I have seen for certain CPU coolers and their retention mechanisms, fitting a GPU water block is actually more straight forward.

I understand there could be all sorts of warranty issues, but surely the same issues someone has fitting a cooler to a GPU would also apply if they were fitting a CPU cooler (other than the retail one) and people seem to get on just fine with those without breaking anything or gouging out great holes in their motherboards.

Maybe it's because I haven't used a GPU air cooler since 2005 and I just resent paying for them all the time ;)
 
Something I haven't thought about before actually. I can see the fact of marketing come in to play with this one as a lot on people play of the Green Vs Red and people have a tendency to lean one way if a card is visually appealing (of course performance matters but I wouldn't rule it out). I wonder how much a "cooler-less" card would cost up against a bog standard of the same card?
 
I havent thought about this before. I doubt they would work out much cheaper after you have bought the fan though.

And i am guessing that the cards would have to be just stock with no sort of overclocking done on them, as depending on what cooler is used then it will vary in what speeds are obtainable.

I think it all comes down to the market being quite small in this respect. if i had the choice i wouldnt probably buy one, unless they were a lot cheaper than a prefitted one.
 
Ultimately they do not do this because -

1. It doesn't fit right will be your most common problem.

2. RMA support will be huge due to damage to the card from users trying to fit coolers.

It's a support nightmare and support is expensive.
 
Aurhinius said:
Ultimately they do not do this because -

1. It doesn't fit right will be your most common problem.

2. RMA support will be huge due to damage to the card from users trying to fit coolers.

It's a support nightmare and support is expensive.
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I think you are right but I think a lot is misconception. Water blocks will always fit to a reference design and there would be no reason not to make a reference design as they are only needed for exotic air coolers.

As for fitting, see my previous point. A lot of CPU air coolers are more difficult to fit than screwing a water block to a card with a lot more room for damaging the motherboard and/or components surrounding the CPU socket.
 
No market I'd assume.

Do AMD make the chips or just licence the design to the manufacturers? If AMD are shipping these out without coolers to Asus, MSI etc. then surely it wouldn't be hard at all to get them. BUT it would probably cut out a lot of their profit.
 
lrlcr said:
No market I'd assume.

Do AMD make the chips or just licence the design to the manufacturers? If AMD are shipping these out without coolers to Asus, MSI etc.
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Sapphire assemble all the revision 1 cards then manufacturers slap stickers/change the bios if need themselves.
 
The need to cool ram and vrm complicate the cooling of a graphics card. Its fine for full waterblock users but for the rest of us who just use custom coolers there is some danger that something could be missed and end up frying the card.

I doubt if stock coolers cost more than a few quid and they are so easy to remove. Besides they are useful just to test the card before modding or while you procrastinate over whether you need a custom cooling solution.
 
Good idea, but some mug is bound to think that they don't need a GPU cooler and try to run it without one. The amount of posts I have seen on youtube about motherboard reviews where they say "With that cooling system I won't need a CPU cooler right?" or on overclocking videos- "If I don't overclock I'll be fine without a cooler won't I" is disturbing.
 
Gundog48 said:
Good idea, but some mug is bound to think that they don't need a GPU cooler and try to run it without one. The amount of posts I have seen on youtube about motherboard reviews where they say "With that cooling system I won't need a CPU cooler right?" or on overclocking videos- "If I don't overclock I'll be fine without a cooler won't I" is disturbing.
Click to expand...

indeed. Idiots are ruining it for the rest of us :(
 
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