Can you buy GPUs sans cooler?

[Diddums]

Just watched Jayz2cents' video on the Kingpin 2080ti, he mentions the market it's aimed at which is obviously the more extreme end of the market where the cooler is likely to be replaced, but this begs the question, why can't you buy cooler-less GPUS? It would probably need to come with disclaimers and whatnot but it could probably save a few pennies.

Do these exist?

 

[eeii]

I know overclockers will sell you a gpu with a waterblock already attached and ready to go but that’s about it from what I have seen.

 

[Journey]

Do these exist?

Yes.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13898/colorful-offers-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-without-cooler

 

[Diddums]

I know overclockers will sell you a gpu with a waterblock already attached and ready to go but that’s about it from what I have seen.

Yep, but you still pay for the original cooler don't you? (I have no idea btw, and I'll never get to that level of PC but I'm just curious).

Yes.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13898/colorful-offers-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-without-cooler

This is a one-off though, isn't it? I don't think any of the heavy hitters do them, and I've never heard of Colorful either.

It just seems a waste to buy a GPU, pay a premium for the top dog, then strip the cooler off and bin it. The only time I can think of the cooler being needed is resale time, but even then these highest tier components tend to stay in the more dedicated circles.

I dunno. Just seems odd.

 

[Journey]

This is a one-off though, isn't it? I don't think any of the heavy hitters do them, and I've never heard of Colorful either.

You've probably never heard of a lot of domestic Chinese brands, but the same factories make lots of the cards you will have heard of.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Yep, but you still pay for the original cooler don't you? (I have no idea btw, and I'll never get to that level of PC but I'm just curious).

You can buy cards with water blocks from EVGA, Zotac, MSI, ASUS. If I ever upgrade my 1080ti I'll probably buy a Zotac card with pre-installed block as the first thing I do is remove the air cooler anyway, which risks warranty.

 

[Kaapstad]

Just watched Jayz2cents' video on the Kingpin 2080ti, he mentions the market it's aimed at which is obviously the more extreme end of the market where the cooler is likely to be replaced, but this begs the question, why can't you buy cooler-less GPUS? It would probably need to come with disclaimers and whatnot but it could probably save a few pennies.

Do these exist?

Because the Kingpin 2080 Ti is not a serious LN2 card, it is for gaming like all the other 2080 Ti cards.

Do you really think Vince (Kingpin) when he does LN2 benching picks a couple of the normal Kingpin 2080 Ti cards at random and strips off their coolers and just adds a LN2 pot?

Not likely his will be the very best cherry picked PCBs from the factory, will probably never have seen the stock cooler then modified even more.

 

[LuckyBenski]

From what I've heard, it's basically a trading standards/warranty type issue. You can't sell a product that would blow up if a customer just plugged it in and switched it on. It has to be "working"/functional to purpose.

Annoyingly, they can't throw the cheapest cooler on the highest end card as it seems backwards. So instead you get a super special upgraded cooler which you'll then pull off and replace with a water block.

 

[Aretak]

Annoyingly, they can't throw the cheapest cooler on the highest end card as it seems backwards.

MSI were doing that with their "Armor" cards. The Armor edition of the 1080 Ti was a good choice for people looking for a card to water cool, as while the cooler than it came with was completely inadequate and could barely stop the card from throttling at stock, it also used the exact same PCB as the much more expensive Gaming X model. Meaning you could just whip the stock cooler off and have a high end, premium PCB ready to go for a water block. They seem to have ditched the Armor lineup above the 2070 for Turing though.

 

[Kaapstad]

From what I've heard, it's basically a trading standards/warranty type issue. You can't sell a product that would blow up if a customer just plugged it in and switched it on. It has to be "working"/functional to purpose.

Annoyingly, they can't throw the cheapest cooler on the highest end card as it seems backwards. So instead you get a super special upgraded cooler which you'll then pull off and replace with a water block.

Cards with waterblocks would also fall into this category as they don't come with water preinstalled.

The same argument can also be made for a lot of high end CPUs as they don't come with any sort of cooling.

 

[new boy]

It helps when you sell it on. Not many people would bother adding, say, a watercooled 780ti kingpin to their loop today, as chances are those who have a custom loop are running somewhat current hardware. An air cooled 780ti would be much easier to shift.

There are also those with more money than sense that will just buy the best gpu avalible to upgrade their air cooled rig, so that niche target audience is probably larger than the niche audience that would buy a top tier pcb for slightly less than the pcb + cooler combo price, but wouldn't buy the pcb + cooler combo if it was the only choice.

 

[Skully178]

I've seen Vegas on ebay with the morpheus cooler installed, though it is rare.