When air cooling isn’t enough
Have you ever tried liquid cooling a graphics card? It’s not the most difficult thing in the world, though between the water cooling loop and delicately removing the card’s stock cooling solution, it can be a little intimidating. And then there’s EVGA’s new GeForce GTX 980 Hybrid with an all-in-one water cooling already installed. All you need to do is plug the card into your mobo, feed it power, and mount the single 120mm fan radiator.
There’s no filling required, no custom tubing to mess with, and no maintenance. Your reward for giving the Maxwell-based GPU a bath is significantly lower temperatures compared to Nvidia’s reference air cooler. According to EVGA’s benchmark chart, a card running at 70C degrees using a reference cooler would be under 45C with the Hybrid.
The card itself comes factory overclocked. Instead of a base clockspeed of 1,126MHz and boost clock of 1,216MHz, the Hybrid runs at 1,291MHz and 1,393MHz, respectively. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory stays at stock speeds — 7,010MHz on a 256-bit bus, resulting in memory bandwidth of 224.3GB/s.
Of course, cooler temps invite overclocking, and EVGA has a couple of software tools to help with that. One is EVGA Precision X, which allows you to adjust the GPU and memory frequencies, moitor temps, and more. You can also use EVGA’s OC Scanner X to stress test and benchmark your overclocked card.
The GeForce GTX 980 Hybrid is available now direct from EVGA for $650. If you already own the card, you can purchase the Hybrid water cooler by itself for $100, which is also available now.
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