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What's been happening with graphics cards?

Tattysnuc

Tattysnuc

Tattysnuc

Associate
Joined
22 Sep 2008
Posts
1,533
Location
Liverpool
Hi all,

I've been out of it for a while - I keep popping back in and reading up, but then get swamped with work and never end up doing anything. My question is this:

"What has happened to GPU's over the past 5 years?"

I've been a slave to upgrading my home PC since the late 90's and I would religiously update to the latest NVidia offering, however that all changed in 2020 with Covid. My system sprang a leak and it all died, so I bought a then "new" GPU (2080 RTX with Bykski waterblock) along with my 5900X and Asus Hero XIII motherboard - and it's been a great servant. I mounted my rig on the wall in an open case so I could marvel at my handiwork - as well as getting a reassuring peek at the water :)

I'm an occasional gamer (World of Tanks was a biggy), the Wolfenstein games... that sort of thing, but I've hardly touched the PC of late, except for using it to "check on my web pages" as the wife puts it.

The meteoric rise in prices put me off investing in my rig anymore and it serves me perfectly well, but I'm curious - what happened? There was a strong watercooling/modding scene and cards would flow on MM and Ebay, but now it seems that watercooling is somewhat niche and the costs.... Wow. Boy have they shot up in price!

I get that times move on, and trends change, but what happened? Where did all those beautiful watercooled enthusiasts go? Why aren't watercooled GPU's commonplace anymore? When did manufacturers stop making the "hydro...." range of GPUs?

I feel a bit like Marty McFly must've felt in BTTF2 in the alternate current day - the PC world building world seems to have fundamentally changed.

Confused of Liverpool
 
Watercooling has just fallen out of fashion with AIOs coming on to the scene. Why bother faffing around building your own, when you can just pay for an all in one sealed unit and get similar results? So with that going the way of the dodo, no call for watercooled gpus to add to your own loop.

Also gpus in general are have just been nothing but greed since covid. Covid pushing the prices up, so they just sold you a basic air cooled one for £1000, so why bother making a fancy one. Then GPU mining was the next thing causing a shortage, so they could bend you over there instead, while they cried crocodile tears that it was external factors putting up while they make record profits.

Next in line is now price fixing from the ram cartel, GPUs finally hit msrp more or less and here comes "we need to put them up" again because of vram. So again, why bother, air does most and they can charge silly prices and if you need a gpu, you have no choice.
 
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As above, AIO got to be good enough and usually RGB better in a windowed case than a huge tower cooler.

GPU's now come with over size coolers to win the review war so are usually quiet enough, and with cards power limited, there isn't really much extra headroom like with Vega 64 and earlier cards.

Then there was hardware stagnation, there wasn't a significant FPS / £ improvement, GPU went crazy in the pandemic and the replacements were equally overpriced so people are hanging on to their hardware longer.

When I bough my GPU a couple of years back, there wasn't a water block for it, and if I wanted an equivalent card that had a block available it was an extra £300 for the card and £200+ for the water block and then add in a bit for a cooling refresh replacing 5+ year old connectors etc. Just didn't seem too make sense when reviews said the card was quiet enough and didn't get that hot. So I grabbed an AIO and ceased WC.
 
Yeah, while a full custom loop is still the ultimate setup, and worth it for an enthusiast with a passion for the hobby, the improvements over a much easier build are now much more marginal than they were.

AIO's are good, capable and quiet as well as reasonably priced, and GPU's now come with bonkers heatsinks with high quality fans (if you buy the premium models) so can run very quietly indeed while pumping out the frames.

Once my watercooling pump breaks I'll probably just put the heatsink/fan back on the GPU, Dark Rock Pro cooler on the CPU, drill a hole from the computer room to the garage for cabling and slap the PC in there for the silence.
 
Those ready-to-watercool cards from the manufacturers were always a very niche product (going back maybe a decade here).

It was a nice product to have as a halo that would get great reviews from various sites, and helped promote the brand through some fun PR, but they were a pain in many ways.

Hardcore fans knew how to buy their own blocks and mount them, and could easily undercut the AIB offerings. And who else was going to buy them?

So there would be a few, but there wasn't much impetus to actually sell them (in my experience, anyway).

Even the PC assemblers weren't that interested, because they can move far more volume on air-cooled / AIO rigs.

I feel like it has only become less popular since then.
 
So to recap what I think you've all said, they have become less commercially viable as the prices have gone up to these silly levels. With the old upper-mid-range cards now costing £500 - £700, these cards don't show discernible benefit from watercooling anymore as the performance gains are nominal and the factory-fitted heatsinks are more than capable or have an AIO variant.

Just looking on EK waterblocks who I always used to use, they seem to now cost £200+ and they don't even make one for the Radeon 9070XT!

GPU Blocks

EKWaterBlocks Shop offers you complete assortiment for water-cooling of your PC. Only EK and EK confirmed quality products.
www.ekwb.com www.ekwb.com
 
Tattysnuc said:
So to recap what I think you've all said, they have become less commercially viable as the prices have gone up to these silly levels. With the old upper-mid-range cards now costing £500 - £700, these cards don't show discernible benefit from watercooling anymore as the performance gains are nominal and the factory-fitted heatsinks are more than capable or have an AIO variant.

Just looking on EK waterblocks who I always used to use, they seem to now cost £200+ and they don't even make one for the Radeon 9070XT!

GPU Blocks

EKWaterBlocks Shop offers you complete assortiment for water-cooling of your PC. Only EK and EK confirmed quality products.
www.ekwb.com www.ekwb.com
Click to expand...
If you want a GPU waterblock then look into either Barrow or Bykski, excellent quality and far cheaper than EK!
 
Tattysnuc said:
Hi all,

I've been out of it for a while - I keep popping back in and reading up, but then get swamped with work and never end up doing anything. My question is this:

"What has happened to GPU's over the past 5 years?"

I've been a slave to upgrading my home PC since the late 90's and I would religiously update to the latest NVidia offering, however that all changed in 2020 with Covid. My system sprang a leak and it all died, so I bought a then "new" GPU (2080 RTX with Bykski waterblock) along with my 5900X and Asus Hero XIII motherboard - and it's been a great servant. I mounted my rig on the wall in an open case so I could marvel at my handiwork - as well as getting a reassuring peek at the water :)

I'm an occasional gamer (World of Tanks was a biggy), the Wolfenstein games... that sort of thing, but I've hardly touched the PC of late, except for using it to "check on my web pages" as the wife puts it.

The meteoric rise in prices put me off investing in my rig anymore and it serves me perfectly well, but I'm curious - what happened? There was a strong watercooling/modding scene and cards would flow on MM and Ebay, but now it seems that watercooling is somewhat niche and the costs.... Wow. Boy have they shot up in price!

I get that times move on, and trends change, but what happened? Where did all those beautiful watercooled enthusiasts go? Why aren't watercooled GPU's commonplace anymore? When did manufacturers stop making the "hydro...." range of GPUs?

I feel a bit like Marty McFly must've felt in BTTF2 in the alternate current day - the PC world building world seems to have fundamentally changed.

Confused of Liverpool
Click to expand...
The price rises are mainly rubbish, but if you upgraded each gen the positive at the top end, in my experience it has been more of an investment than in the past. My last 3 gpus have all been sold for around the price i bought them.
 
Sc00p007 said:
The price rises are mainly rubbish, but if you upgraded each gen the positive at the top end, in my experience it has been more of an investment than in the past. My last 3 gpus have all been sold for around the price i bought them.
Click to expand...
I've also slayed in recouping initial investment costs, but it's a horrible dynamic. I'd happily give back the ~£1200 total I've gotten made over the last 4 years (out of pure luck) by buying "low" and selling high if it meant prices would reduce and stabilize. But every time I think the world is coming back to sanity...
 
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Tattysnuc said:
Where did all those beautiful watercooled enthusiasts go? Why aren't watercooled GPU's commonplace anymore?
Click to expand...
Highend GPU's used to cost £400 to £600 where now highend GPU's can cost £2,000+ which really makes you not what add the price of a waterblock on top
Plus a lot of the aircoolers GPU's come with these days are so good & quiet it not worth the cost changing to a waterblock.
 
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Even if you get a card that has quiet fans, you may be blighted by noisy coil while… or it may just not bother you at all.

I can save you the agony of returning various cards to tell you that THE solution for this sort of issue, if you’re on the fence on whether a card is tolerable, is using comfortable and decent noise cancelling headphones.
 
Nitefly said:
Even if you get a card that has quiet fans, you may be blighted by noisy coil while… or it may just not bother you at all.

I can save you the agony of returning various cards to tell you that THE solution for this sort of issue, if you’re on the fence on whether a card is tolerable, is using comfortable and decent noise cancelling headphones.
Click to expand...
Sadly not an option for me.

My PC is wall mounted to the right of where I sit. I've already invested in speakers which I love, so I tend to be a bit of a stickler for "features" like coil whine.
 
Tattysnuc said:
Sadly not an option for me.

My PC is wall mounted to the right of where I sit. I've already invested in speakers which I love, so I tend to be a bit of a stickler for "features" like coil whine.
Click to expand...

Yes, I’m also a stickler which I why I went through five 5090s, the first four of which all had intolerable noise, and I never settled on any 40 series card as they were all so noisy I just gave up.

Anyone that thinks these cards are silent must be pretty deaf tbh. I don’t actually mind a consistent droning sound but anything that changes in pitch when I move my mouse around in game is a big fat no.

Apple AirPod Max headphones = absolutely godlike for killing off annoying coil whine and letting you enjoy your games, because the ear cups are large (not hot) and soft so the seal is retained with glasses (mine at least). I highly, highly recommend this if you are in a similar boat to me. You can still enjoy using your speakers for games that aren’t maxing your card and browsing / videos etc.

Deffo keep it as an option to try out, at the very least.
 
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Armadillo said:
Watercooling has just fallen out of fashion with AIOs coming on to the scene. Why bother faffing around building your own, when you can just pay for an all in one sealed unit and get similar results? So with that going the way of the dodo, no call for watercooled gpus to add to your own loop.

Also gpus in general are have just been nothing but greed since covid. Covid pushing the prices up, so they just sold you a basic air cooled one for £1000, so why bother making a fancy one. Then GPU mining was the next thing causing a shortage, so they could bend you over there instead, while they cried crocodile tears that it was external factors putting up while they make record profits.

Next in line is now price fixing from the ram cartel, GPUs finally hit msrp more or less and here comes "we need to put them up" again because of vram. So again, why bother, air does most and they can charge silly prices and if you need a gpu, you have no choice.
Click to expand...
thing with this is you do have a choice just dont buy they still have to sell their products but sadly humans are mostly sheep and just give in. regardless of if there is a price increase of making the item if it dont sell it has to be dropped in price to be sold.
 
I always thought the pre blocked cards were dumb, say it was a £600 card and £200 for a block..the pre blocked ones would be say £1200 for some models.

Granted you get the warranty but if you’re that into your aesthetics/performance you’d be better off doing it yourself :)

The aio models are pretty obscene now too
 
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Defy Belief said:
I always thought the pre blocked cards were dumb, say it was a £600 card and £200 for a block..the pre blocked ones would be say £1200 for some models.

Granted you get the warranty but if you’re that into your aesthetics/performance you’d be better off doing it yourself :)

The aio models are pretty obscene now too
Click to expand...
agreed. It could be quite hit and miss buying a waterblock for some gfx cards on the second hand market with the compatibility. That always made me nervous buying from Lithuania or wherever it is that EK are, and sending them £100+ for something that may not fit, and by the time you find out, you've deblocked you aircooler and need to replace the pads as they never seem to cool as well once they have been removed.

There seems to be quite a good compatibility list now, though, so that looks to have improved.

As for the pricing that manufacturers charges, agreed - complete nonsense. They priced themselves out of the market on that. I like the concept of the dual cooling card that Asus came up with, but ultimately they were just too big. The hydro-copper and Seawolf or whatever name the marketing numpties came up with, were similarly overpriced showing that they clearly dint; know their market... or maybe I'm just not their demographic....?
 
Tattysnuc said:
Hi all,

I've been out of it for a while - I keep popping back in and reading up, but then get swamped with work and never end up doing anything. My question is this:

"What has happened to GPU's over the past 5 years?"
Click to expand...


Youre still calling them "graphics cards" that's why you are confused. There are no more graphics cards anymore, companies now only make AI accelerators that have been later repurposed to display graphics
 
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