I am tempted to put one of these babies under water and run it. But Given my limited budget and my aversion to using Watercooling for now. (Mainly due to budgetary issues and the fact that I'd have tear my case apart) I'll hold off for a long long time.
@LennyRhys, What is a 480SE? I remeber there being a 460SE which had less shaders than the standard 460s. Is that the case with the 480 too?
The "SE" is Gigabyte's own designation of Special Edition because the card has a non-reference PCB which is far superior to a standard 480 because it has a crazy 12 phase power design (10 for the GPU and 2 for the memory). And, as Parge said, it also has a very nice aftermarket cooler. The PCB is exactly the same as Gigabyte's SOC version of the 480. It's freaking awesome... AHAHAHAH 240 pence maybe
You know why people do watercooling - Because it looks awesome, you can get higher OCs, but most of all to keep noise levels and temps down. With the 680 4GB Super-Duper Edition there isn’t much point, the card is already silent, chews through everything and thanks to clever software and a smaller process technology, already runs lovely and cool. However it’ll also cost you an absolute packet. As far as I’m concerned the GTX 480 is the ideal card for watercooling. The amount of power it delivers was never in question – its top draw - but the reason it’s not an all time classic like the 8800 GTX is that it wasn’t as ‘refined’. It achieved its monumentus power output through brute force rather than tuning, and as a result is hot, loud and power hungry. But, these are the exact reasons why it makes such a good case for itself when it comes to watercooling, as that immediately eliminates the first two of those problems outright, and as Blogins has already proved, the last of those issues is overstated, a good quality PSU will capably run one or even two 480’s. I say pick up a second hand block and backplate and do it. Oh, and did I say it looks awesome? Because it looks awesome.
200 quid then? It only needs a core block because it has a baseplate for all the VRMs and memory. I did that for ~8 months!
Nice to see one of my fav cards of all time getting some lovin' Run mine at defaults currently - with a Zalman VF3000 iirc it dropped temps by a good +20% in my setup over the OEM cooling.
I'm sorry to report that my evga gtx 480 with ivy vision cooler will be on the marketplace in a few days time, once my new gfx card arrives. In the words of the great rolf harris, can you tell what it is yet?
If anyone fancies another 480 for SLI goodness let me know. Members of the 480 appreciation society can have first dibs on it Will be wanting £130ic p&p.
Traitor! Also is that a Gigabyte GTX 670 by any chance? Yet my reference PCB clocks higher! Sorry, couldn't resist!
Acrylic pipe that provides support for the heavy EK-FC480 GTX water block. Works a treat and completely stole the idea from a fellow Bit-Techer!