EVGA unveils water cooled GeForce GTX 480 and 470

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Jos

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After a long wait and repeated delays Nvidia finally launched its next-generation Fermi architecture last week with the GeForce GTX 470 and 480 graphics cards. But while the company was able to regain the single-GPU performance crown, it came at the cost of a very high operating temperature. Therefore looking to protect your investment and help you avoid any hardware damage from overheating, EVGA is releasing a pair of water cooled solutions.


The GTX 470 and GTX 480 Hydro Copper FTW drop the large heatsink with the loud fan and will instead hook up to your liquid cooling system, while still featuring a rather high factory overclock -- and a premium price tag to go with it. Both cards get a 50MHz speed boost to achieve 650MHz and 750MHz core clock speeds, respectively. Shaders and memory have also been bumped to 1300/3402MHz on the GTX 470, and 1500/3800MHz on the higher end GTX 480.

It's interesting to see these cards announced already given that Nvidia said only models based on the reference design would be available at launch. In any case, the GTX 480 Hydro Copper FTW is set to sell for $650, while the GTX 470 HC FTW is $499 -- which is actually not too bad considering water blocks can easily reach prices around $70-100.

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It's getting to the ridiculous stage now for this card. Seriously - water cooling? And for $650?? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that nVidia has o/c'd the crap out of this GPU to create the heat it's generating. And of course they did that to be crowned the new single fastest GPU King.

I ain't touching these 470/480 cards with a ten foot pole.
 
have it your way at GPU King......

TomSEA said:
It's getting to the ridiculous stage now for this card. Seriously - water cooling? And for $650?? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that nVidia has o/c'd the crap out of this GPU to create the heat it's generating. And of course they did that to be crowned the new single fastest GPU King.

I ain't touching these 470/480 cards with a ten foot pole.

Oh for gods sake Tom, will you be reasonable and look on the bright side for once?!.....you can have waffles with E-V-G-A on them .....:D:p:wave:
 
red1776 said:
TomSEA said:
It's getting to the ridiculous stage now for this card. Seriously - water cooling? And for $650?? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that nVidia has o/c'd the crap out of this GPU to create the heat it's generating. And of course they did that to be crowned the new single fastest GPU King.

I ain't touching these 470/480 cards with a ten foot pole.

Oh for gods sake Tom, will you be reasonable and look on the bright side for once?!.....you can have waffles with E-V-G-A on them .....:D:p:wave:

No no no.. red1776. You would really need two of them to cook the waffle in between them, otherwise they are just silly pancakes.
 
It's getting to the ridiculous stage now for this card. Seriously - water cooling? And for $650?? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that nVidia has o/c'd the crap out of this GPU to create the heat it's generating. And of course they did that to be crowned the new single fastest GPU King.

I'd say 750/1500/3800 clocks are just an attention grabber. Of course sometimes the bait snags the equivalent of New Jersey Whitefish, but hey!, gotta do something to distinguish yourself amongst the competition...right?
I think my definition of an overclock would be closer to the German PCGH site's (air cooled) efforts of 825/1650/4600, or course that may not be indicative of all cards, but it's fairly safe to assume that a waterblocked card will provide a little more peace of mind if the user wants to explore the possibilites.
 
So for $650 I can get a Wii $200, Xbox 360 $200 and almost have enough left over to get a PS3 for $300.

I do realize that these are the high end cards and only a select few people ever buy these. Most people like myself wait for the mid range card of new products to come out in the 100-200 price range.
 
This is pretty much what you'll have to do to run these cards in the summer. I'll pass on buying a liquid cooling setup just to have a little peace of mind.
 
Nvidia....making food a 4 letter word

No no no.. red1776. You would really need two of them to cook the waffle in between them, otherwise they are just silly pancakes.

of course Trill,.....SLIcakes, how did i miss that? :D
 
Man, took me a while to quit chuckling at the comments here...

I'm trying to look at the bright side on this... I guess if you already have a liquid cooling setup, this would be appealing. But, if not, add all the work and additional hardware to the equation if you want to know the price of having a 480 that isn't a space heater...
 
Gaming waffles / pancakes... Now THERE is a true niche market.

Am I the only one wondering now if nVidia and EVGA might have done the cooking mechanism for the Cylon toaster?
 
Water cooling means one need not worry about the sides of one's expensive case being blown off by the nominally supplied air cooling solution.
 
This is a 250watt steam generator. If you have 2 of these cards in SLI, you could run your own steam powered turbo-generator to give some power back to the grid. Or steam veggies.
 
yep youll definitly need this for this summer, i can see air cooled cards hitting 100C easy in the next few months lol
 
especially countries where you have midday tempertures of 35 celcius. I think you can even bake eggs on them or what about redirecting the coolingfluid to a 10cm x10cm x 4cm aluminum block put a pot on it and start baking fries or even make coffee. (Couldn't help myself; this is definitely something that made me laugh out loud when Red, V and Tom started talking about it)
 
gwailo247 said:
Water cooling and these cards sounds like a recipe for a giant plume of steam escaping your computer.

This isn't even very from the truth. At load, this thing hits...what? 85 C? Have any of you actually converted that? It's roughly 190 degrees Fahrenheit. The boiling point of water is 212 F. Another 22 degrees F and you WOULD be boiling it. And this card might even reach that temperature in a fair number of systems given that not everyone has a very well ventilated/dust-free case.
 
This isn't even very from the truth. At load, this thing hits...what? 85 C? Have any of you actually converted that? It's roughly 190 degrees Fahrenheit. The boiling point of water is 212 F. Another 22 degrees F and you WOULD be boiling it. And this card might even reach that temperature in a fair number of systems given that not everyone has a very well ventilated/dust-free case.

You obviously have little or no idea about how watercooling works. You obviously believe that the coolant (very few people use straight distilled/demineralized water) is somehow stationary.

For anyone who has an interest in the actual product...and a watercool setup.

GTX 470
Load Heatsink: 83C
Load Waterblock: 38C

GTX 480
Load Heatsink: 95C
Load Waterblock: 49C

The waterblock numbers are for the overclocked cards.
Single loop with CPU, 120.3 rad with low rpm fans, enclosed chassis, 5% perf. gain over stock.
The GTX 480 load figure (49C) is about 3C higher than my GTX 280's at full load ,also with a 120.3 rad -Feser XChanger 360, although with three 1300rpm Noctua NF-P12 (not LNA/ULNA configured)

http://www.evga.com/FORUMS/tm.aspx?m=271190
 
Pft... heat... power WHO CARES!?! Thats like complaining that your corvette makes too much noise and uses too much gas. Stop acting like a little girl. the 5870 is like a base model mustang... no GT = No Physx. I want all sliders to the right and all functions/features ON! I will settle for nothing less!
 
Wow I just noticed how many people know absolutly nothing about "water" cooling. It doesn't use plain water... what do you people think that you just plug your computer into the sink or something? Thats what a radiator is for genious. I bet you though you just pour water in there and seal it up... HA now thats is WAAAY funnier than waffles. ROFL. Plume of steam... i think i just pee'd my pants... lol.
 
...not having to be a rocket scientist and not touching something with a 10 foot pole?

Any more clichés available?
 
I think that many people know how a radiator works. What the point is that if it is taking water cooling (polyethylene glycol and water) to get the GPU core temps back into some sense of managable temperatures, then the root problem is the fact that this card uses allot of power to do its job. In the day of shrinking die sizes and the focus on less power consumption in consumer electronics, a product like this that uses 500+watts at load is just mind boggling. I think the law of diminishing returns could be applied here, but at what cost? The cost of a higher electricity bill, or the pre-mature failure of a PSU or PSU wire? All this to get 10-20% higher performance than your rivial? Even if you water cooled this card, the heat load from the radiator dumped into the air in your home will need to be moved once again by the A/C system dumping that heat into the outside atmosphere. If you have the money to support buying this card and "Keeping up with the Jones" mentality, then go for it. I'll be happy with what I have and enjoy what it gives me, and I will steer clear of products like this. And no, I don't drive a Prius either......
 
Gonna get me a couple of those cards and be the first kid on the block to cool them with liquid nitrogen.... I'll bet they really rock in a crossfire configuration o/ced to the max!!
 
Hot as hell and Absolute zero.....

Pft... heat... power WHO CARES!?! Thats like complaining that your corvette makes too much noise and uses too much gas. Stop acting like a little girl. the 5870 is like a base model mustang... no GT = No Physx. I want all sliders to the right and all functions/features ON! I will settle for nothing less!

so...5870 = Mustang GT
....GTX 480 = Corvette
......I guess that makes the 5970 a Bugatti Veyron :)


Gonna get me a couple of those cards and be the first kid on the block to cool them with liquid nitrogen.... I'll bet they really rock in a crossfire configuration o/ced to the max!!

might I suggest that if you dont know that Nvidia is SLI and not Crossfire......you shouldn't be handling LN2. :p
 
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