Help Best 1080 card for water cooling

[Yan816]

Can anyone offer advice on what is the best highest clocked out of the box 1080 GPU for me to water cool.

I plan on water cooling it from the get go, so don't need the quietest. At the moment I am torn between the Asus GeForce GTX 1080 ROG STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING overclocked Graphics Card and the MSI GeForce® GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G Graphics Card.

 

[RSR]

I'd recommend a EVGA card (1080FTW or FTW2) or one that comes pre-installed with a WB.

You void the warranty on a ASUS card when you install a WB on it technically.

 

[Legend]

With EVGA you don't void the warranty, nor with MSI I don't think.

There is no point going for a high clocked card... all 1080's perform the same anyway, and with water you can OC it easily, but even then an OC'd 1080 doesn't perform much better. Just go with the cheapest that is still covered by warranty if you remove the cooler.

 

[nightrider1470]

Why water-cooling when they don't even overclock that well

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Why water-cooling when they don't even overclock that well

Quiet, cool. Overclocking is the 3rd reason in order of importance for me.

 

[Panos]

Can anyone offer advice on what is the best highest clocked out of the box 1080 GPU for me to water cool.

I plan on water cooling it from the get go, so don't need the quietest. At the moment I am torn between the Asus GeForce GTX 1080 ROG STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING overclocked Graphics Card and the MSI GeForce® GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G Graphics Card.

ALL 1080s are power limited to 1.093v and underwater will overclock more to less the same. If you plan to watercool get the cheapest one and overclock it.

The only one that has 1.2v BIOS cost £800 (One of the three Strixx not "all of them") but it is only ~40mhz faster tops, than eg the MSI Armor OC I had watercooled (cost me £599 and got 2190 clock).

What matter most is to have really good watercooling to keep the card bellow the 32C max 35C under heavy load.

All the 1080s start throttling from 22C, and thats something you cannot avoid.

To do so you need Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut as minimum, next step up is liquid metal if you are brave, and equivalent high rating thermal VRAM strips.

 

[Yan816]

Are the water cooled graphics cards sold by Overclockers sent with their original air coolers? just in case I want to revert back?

 

[Yan816]

Thanks for the replies. I know the risks involved with water cooling, I just need to find one that has a better chance of overclocking to some decent speeds.

Are there any that are know to have decent vendor software for overclocking and tweaking things?

 

[Legend]

Thanks for the replies. I know the risks involved with water cooling, I just need to find one that has a better chance of overclocking to some decent speeds.

Are there any that are know to have decent vendor software for overclocking and tweaking things?

IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE lol! You're silly to pay more for a card than necessary. Just get the cheapest card that you are covered on warranty for removing cooler and putting on a block. Simple. I'm pretty sure Gigabyte fall in to that category, in which case THIS CARD would be the best choice by far.

And once you go water, you won't go back. The risk is minimal if you do everything right. Leaks are VERY rare to be honest, and when they happen it's invariably a minor little drip as a result of a dodgy o-ring or something not being tightened, and your initial leak test (which is imperative) would catch that 99.9% of the time. Plus such issues are easily fixed. I don't think I've ever seen a cataclysmic failure in a custom loop that's resulted in major damage (I'm sure they have happened, but are as mathematically rare as you can get). I have seen this with AIOs however, but I wouldn't touch them anyway.