News Asus announces the ROG Strix LC Radeon RX 6900 XT

Surely the most useless card of this generation, mainly because of the hard power limit set by AMD which will severely hinder any overclocking.

 

Dunno about that - for someone who wants a really quiet card, but isn't prepared to either mod their own AIO in to to make a custom loop, this will do the job (in a rather expensive way, mind)

 

Sledgehammer to drive in a nail comes to mind.

 

the limit is 3Ghz, significantly higher than default clocks, the 6800XT version get another 11% fps, so if priced reasonably would make this stronger more often than the 3090, I'd want to buy a stock variant though and plumb one into my own setup but its a nice option for those with water setups.

 

Nah.

I've been water cooling GPUs ever since the 1080Ti (well, Titan XP). Basically when the blower became incapable of cooling the card and offering any overclock. I've had a few cards since then on water, and the difference is huge. Sure, very high end air coolers may do a better job than that blower and offer overclocking but they also make noise. Depending on those overclocks noise and heat. I have what I consider to be a very quiet 2070 Super and the cooler on it doesn't have a huge job to do. I mean the die is totally mingy.



However with the rest of the rig under water I soon notice that GPU spin up into life and start whirring. And of course the 70 odd degree temps. I have only bought one card that I have not put under water in about 5 years and that is this.



Which also has a 240mm AIO on and I can tell you 2150mhz at 44c max is much better than the die constantly running at twice that heat and all of the noise involved. My fans are simply set to 7v like the rest in the rig and that sound profile never changes.

I guess it's the same question of "Is water cooling worth it?". Yes, yes it is. Especially on a GPU, the single most hottest component in your PC.

 

To my mind you get better value out of sticking an AIO on a GPU than a CPU since you get direct-die contact, and also the die is really big. I put a little 120mm one on an RX 480 because my case layout was peculiar (and the regular cooler was shockingly bad) and it was kept ~silent at 60 degrees. Feels to me like the difference with a moderate air cooler on a CPU and an AIO isn't so much.