Soldato
- Joined
- 9 Mar 2009
- Posts
- 2,877
- Location
- -
My new toy arrived this morning! When I saw it on today only for £439.99 I snapped one up quick. I was tempted to get two, but not until I know there will be a full cover waterblock.
But shame on ocuk! That's 2 orders in a row with no haribo. WTF?
The aesthetics of the card are excellent, imo. Those of you with 90/180 degree motherboards are gonna love it too. In these pics it looks a dull dark greyish colour, but that's just my rubbish iphone camera. The metalwork is jet black.
MSI: put those nice shiny 'msi' stickers on the fan hubs you numpties.
Here it is next to the whiny annoying wimp it's replacing.
I didn't realise from the pics I'd seen that it was so big, especially the width.
Fits with acres to spare in my 600t though.
Length wise it is roughly half a centimeter longer than the width of an E-ATX board.
I bought the phantom for aesthetics and quietness. It delivered on neither. I paid a lot for it too. Oh well, live and learn.
The side view is the second worst part of the Phantom. Those struts and the shroud are plastic, and it shows. The lightning looks the dogs. The rubbish iphone camera doesn't show it too well, but the nickel plated heatpipe isn't dirty-looking, it's.. nickley. Nice industrial-looking design from the side. My only gripe is that the side of the pcb isn't black. Although.. Idk if I've eveer sen a pcb that's coloured on the sides.
And this is where it REALLY trumps the phantom.
Words can't describe how ugly that brown pcb is. Brown. BROWN. This isn't 1997, Palit.
The GPU 'reactor core'? I'm sceptical. I bet it's useful if you're chucking silly volts through this under LN2 or w/e and chasing world records, but it's probably not going to help me on air (or hopefully water) and it certainly isn't doing anything on stock volts.
The stickers do my nut in though. I'm sure MSI's warranty doesn't transfer to 2nd hand owners, so they should've put the yellow warning (about improper installation of the reactor core) as a peel-off label on top of the thing itself. Then that white serial number sticker, that should be on the damn PCB, or underside of the backplate, with a matching one on the inside of the product box. The tiny coloured stickers.. I have no idea what they are about yet, but they irritate me greatly. They say 01 ok, 02 ok ,03 ok. So clearly useless, and not even straight!.
I'm going to read my warranty right away and see which of these I can tear off.
No pics of it in my system yet sorry. I have an embarrassing watercooling situation ^_^. But to describe it:
There are two blue LEDs in the fans, not crazy bright like the disco jetstream, very dim infact. The light is not visible elsewhere in the case. The reactor core with MSI logo lights up blue, again very dimly. There are a series of LEDS relating to power stages, or something like that (I haven't read the manual). On the stock bios these LEDs are blue, this time they are quite bright, but they are very small, they don't chuck too much light out. When you flick to the overclocking bios I believe these glow red. Sitting on desktop now there's only 4 lit up, during stress, more
.
The card fits my black/white theme very well, but it clashes with my motherboard (maximus iv extreme-z). Tbh though if my usb 3 stops working and I have to waste even more time getting it to work again I'm just going to sell it and buy a z77, probably an msi in black/blue.
The bit everyone is interested in:
Overclocking.
I haven't had enough time yet, I spent most of today sneezing, snorting and blowing my nose, while trying to re-do my cable management.
This is what I have for you atm:
Stock Bios.
Note:
Power limit makes 0 difference on stock volts. My power has never gone above 76% in the benching I have done so far (Heaven 3.0). I even set my max overclock to a power target of 80 and got the same result.
Everything is on the stock fan profile too. It's pretty warm in here tbh. Max temp I saw was 62c but it generally hanged at 61c.
Out of the box - Core 1110mhz, Boost 1202mhz, Mem 6010mhz
Max core overclock - Core 1110 Boost 1267mhz (momentary peaks of 1275), Mem 6010mhz
So core on stock volts is a max of +65. not bad I guess. Now I have noticed that the peak voltage was 1.187, which I believe was probably during the time it boosted to 1275. Or that could be a bug in afterburner, because I though gpu boost worked in 13mhz increments, which would mean it would boost to 1280? Whether the voltage was real or not, I need more to go over 1267, because +66 gives me a CTD on 1.175.
I'm going to start on the memory tomorrow. This is my first go with 600 series so any pointers? I've read I might have to drop the core to reach higher with the memory. Honestly I'm not sure how high to aim. I moved the slider thinking it would be a small increment and it was a +100 jump. (Baring in mind I'm coming from a 580 that would CTD from heaven with *any* overclock on the memory).
My plan is to see how far it will go while stock, then add more volts (If possible without the 2nd bios. Again, I need to read the manual, lol) and take it to the raggedy edge. Then I can flip to the 2nd bios and do the same again.
Any questions about it, fire 'em off. I'll see what I can do.
Anyone else playing with one yet?
But shame on ocuk! That's 2 orders in a row with no haribo. WTF?
The aesthetics of the card are excellent, imo. Those of you with 90/180 degree motherboards are gonna love it too. In these pics it looks a dull dark greyish colour, but that's just my rubbish iphone camera. The metalwork is jet black.
MSI: put those nice shiny 'msi' stickers on the fan hubs you numpties.
Here it is next to the whiny annoying wimp it's replacing.
I didn't realise from the pics I'd seen that it was so big, especially the width.
Fits with acres to spare in my 600t though.
Length wise it is roughly half a centimeter longer than the width of an E-ATX board.
I bought the phantom for aesthetics and quietness. It delivered on neither. I paid a lot for it too. Oh well, live and learn.
The side view is the second worst part of the Phantom. Those struts and the shroud are plastic, and it shows. The lightning looks the dogs. The rubbish iphone camera doesn't show it too well, but the nickel plated heatpipe isn't dirty-looking, it's.. nickley. Nice industrial-looking design from the side. My only gripe is that the side of the pcb isn't black. Although.. Idk if I've eveer sen a pcb that's coloured on the sides.
And this is where it REALLY trumps the phantom.
Words can't describe how ugly that brown pcb is. Brown. BROWN. This isn't 1997, Palit.
The GPU 'reactor core'? I'm sceptical. I bet it's useful if you're chucking silly volts through this under LN2 or w/e and chasing world records, but it's probably not going to help me on air (or hopefully water) and it certainly isn't doing anything on stock volts.
The stickers do my nut in though. I'm sure MSI's warranty doesn't transfer to 2nd hand owners, so they should've put the yellow warning (about improper installation of the reactor core) as a peel-off label on top of the thing itself. Then that white serial number sticker, that should be on the damn PCB, or underside of the backplate, with a matching one on the inside of the product box. The tiny coloured stickers.. I have no idea what they are about yet, but they irritate me greatly. They say 01 ok, 02 ok ,03 ok. So clearly useless, and not even straight!.
I'm going to read my warranty right away and see which of these I can tear off.
No pics of it in my system yet sorry. I have an embarrassing watercooling situation ^_^. But to describe it:
There are two blue LEDs in the fans, not crazy bright like the disco jetstream, very dim infact. The light is not visible elsewhere in the case. The reactor core with MSI logo lights up blue, again very dimly. There are a series of LEDS relating to power stages, or something like that (I haven't read the manual). On the stock bios these LEDs are blue, this time they are quite bright, but they are very small, they don't chuck too much light out. When you flick to the overclocking bios I believe these glow red. Sitting on desktop now there's only 4 lit up, during stress, more
.The card fits my black/white theme very well, but it clashes with my motherboard (maximus iv extreme-z). Tbh though if my usb 3 stops working and I have to waste even more time getting it to work again I'm just going to sell it and buy a z77, probably an msi in black/blue.
The bit everyone is interested in:
Overclocking.
I haven't had enough time yet, I spent most of today sneezing, snorting and blowing my nose, while trying to re-do my cable management.
This is what I have for you atm:
Stock Bios.
Note:
Power limit makes 0 difference on stock volts. My power has never gone above 76% in the benching I have done so far (Heaven 3.0). I even set my max overclock to a power target of 80 and got the same result.
Everything is on the stock fan profile too. It's pretty warm in here tbh. Max temp I saw was 62c but it generally hanged at 61c.
Out of the box - Core 1110mhz, Boost 1202mhz, Mem 6010mhz
Max core overclock - Core 1110 Boost 1267mhz (momentary peaks of 1275), Mem 6010mhz
So core on stock volts is a max of +65. not bad I guess. Now I have noticed that the peak voltage was 1.187, which I believe was probably during the time it boosted to 1275. Or that could be a bug in afterburner, because I though gpu boost worked in 13mhz increments, which would mean it would boost to 1280? Whether the voltage was real or not, I need more to go over 1267, because +66 gives me a CTD on 1.175.
I'm going to start on the memory tomorrow. This is my first go with 600 series so any pointers? I've read I might have to drop the core to reach higher with the memory. Honestly I'm not sure how high to aim. I moved the slider thinking it would be a small increment and it was a +100 jump. (Baring in mind I'm coming from a 580 that would CTD from heaven with *any* overclock on the memory).
My plan is to see how far it will go while stock, then add more volts (If possible without the 2nd bios. Again, I need to read the manual, lol) and take it to the raggedy edge. Then I can flip to the 2nd bios and do the same again.
Any questions about it, fire 'em off. I'll see what I can do.
Anyone else playing with one yet?
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