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Why do vendors not sell cards just for water cooling blocks

mods1965

mods1965

mods1965

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I have been wondering why a card vendor has not offered a card without the heat pipes and fan cooling etc. for those who only want to put a water block on it.
Every time a new card is lunched, you always see the question about warranty if the cooler is removed. Why not just sell a card and let the consumer pick their cooling option. I know I can get that from OCUK now, but I can fit a block myself for less money, as can a lot of people.
This should make the cards cheaper without all that extra cooling and copper and they should be able to package it for transit so the bear board is not damaged.
I see plenty of cards going second hand with blocks on them now days, so there must be a market for them now.
Good idea or bad?
 
when I tried to sell my GPU's with blocks, I got very very low offers... refitted the air coolers and all 3 sold within 2 weeks at prices much higher than the offers I'd been getting with the blocks on

for this reason alone, I would always buy cards with air coolers and refit them before trying to sell

my waterblocks themselves I think I got like £20 for each, when they were £80 new... there is not a large market for 2nd hand water cooling kit so prices tend to be rock bottom on anything water cooling related

I think the best offer I got on my cards with blocks was about £900 (£300 each), I actually got around £350 each just selling them without the blocks at all
 
I've wondered this before, it is quite wasteful to take the coolers off ( also I find the same thing with intel stock coolers ) maybe its more expensive for the companies to have 2 seperate products for sale

It does make it more fragile though so it is harder to ship it safely
 
More resale value with a stock air cooler, I've always bought cards with blocks on to start with and coming to resell them takes time.
 
You'd get at least a couple of donkeys trying to run them with no cooling at all I'd imagine.
 
I wondered that the DOA was the most obvious reason and from the responses so far, it seems that this would not be popular. Thanks to all for taking the time to respond.
 
Gigabyte had a contest on Swedish news site sweclockers.com, in where you should give tips on some hardware feature you would like to see in upcoming gigabyte products.

The winner had suggested Graphics cards with a modular design, similar to this suggestion, so the interest from HW developers is definitely there, but I imagine the demand is nowhere near enough to justify it.
 
-low demand
-How to know if its DOA prior to fitting
-Most companies don't support warranty after cooler removal but they would have to give some sort of warranty on these cards. I am sure the low demand and higher risk probably dont make it a worthwhile product.
-Offering a cooler-less GPU wont increase sales, so there is little point

I always bought mine with a cooler to test prior to fitting and for the resale value.
 
I can't see how knowing if it is DOA or not would put people off? I mean you can't know if a new card with stock cooler is DOA or not either.. Doesn't take much to take off the cooler, kill it and pop the cooler back on :confused:
 
I'd say mainly because there are many people out there who will buy them and think that they don't need any cooling, even if it states otherwise all over the box. If they slap a stock heatsink on it then the morons can't complain if it dies because they've actively removed the heatsink.
 
Quite understand all the above, but let me ask you all one thing, Intel do it, so why not AMD and NVidia.
 
bru said:
Quite understand all the above, but let me ask you all one thing, Intel do it, so why not AMD and NVidia.
Click to expand...


Money. Barebone cards already go to AIBP, there's no incentive to sell them this way to consumers as they would have to charge less and not sell as many units in the process. Not to mention potential warranty claims as somebody already mentioned. Doesn't benefit NVIDIA or AMD to do this at all
 
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bru said:
Quite understand all the above, but let me ask you all one thing, Intel do it, so why not AMD and NVidia.
Click to expand...

CPU's have had protection mechanisms since the early 2000's (P3/P4 era, I'm not sure when AMD implemented it I know early socket A Athlon's melted).

I don't think they could implement it at BIOS level with a GPU it would require drivers to be loaded and an independent hardware solution would just add extra expense. Plus there's the VRM's.
 
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