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I got my 2080 Ti Sea Hawk X today:
So far:
-very good cooling, 40ish temperature under load, I wasn't able to get it to 50C
-very good radiator magnetic fan, very quiet, like 2 times quieter than stock fans of my Corsair H115i (that are maxing out at similar RPM to MSI fan)
-not a 3-slot brick
-I got it for only 50 EUR more than MSI Trio X or EVGA XC Ultra, so thats barely a difference
-decent power limit at 330W max
-after OC it matches my 1080 SLI OC in benchmarks, which is exactly what I expected, the power of my 2 cards in one
-very short tubes, they didn't reach the front of my Define R5 case (about 5 cm too short)
-plastic shroud is not of very good quality (rather mounting quality than plastic itself, not enough mounting points cause it to bend in some places), but it is meaningless
-despite very good cooling (so less voltage needed) this 330W power limit is still heavily limiting overclocking potential, throttling starts at as low as 1.000V voltage, which won't be enough for stable 2100 MHz
So the rumor of poor quality plastic shroud is true, but "barely lower temperatures than air cards" and "loud fan" is a complete nonsense, as expected.
There is nothing particular about this card, just a card with AIO mounted on and similar power target to best air cards, with some design flaws like poor quality shroud and short tubes. EVGA is going to have very easy win with their hybrid. If they decide to cool the memory with AIO again (which makes no sense because it compromises core temp significantly while memory does not need watercooling) then MSI is going to have significant lead in core temp like with 1080 Ti hybrids, but there will be no other advantages.
Got it!
@Kaapstad did you take the plunge yet?
Waiting for maybe a super-duper Kingpin style card like your 980Ti's Kaap? The copper on those babies were
Don't have the 7980XE here sadly otherwise I'd try to banish Nexus and 2 Cents Extreme score, too.
Came Thursday, but a longer delay for my block haha
Yep. FE cards have a firmware lock by the looks of things.
Get Kaap to do a "shorts" roll of honour thread.
I caved..
Finally got mine last night. Just my luck that the guy made me wait until his very last delivery at 9pm. I had been up since 5am and I was so tired by the time he got here, the best I could manage was to install it and test it to make sure it was working. Yesterday may have been a bust, but today... Today, this thing gets put through it's paces. All I need now is a bigger hard drive and my Threadripper rig will finally be complete.