Hardware What's the best way to cool your graphics card?

But the biggest flaw of that, is Latency. That's why Intel intergrated the north bridge into their CPU's.

So unless they can stack everything on the GPU Die, (Which will create massives of heat) So we won't be seeing anything like that in the near future.

 

I was thinking that if memory were to be replaceable that the socket would work similarly to video cards now but parallel to the motherboard.

 

Sometimes the card is loud anyway. I have a MSI GTX 560ti Hawk (Twin Frozr), and I have to undervolt and underclock the card when I play SWTOR (which taxes my card to 100% on planets with a lot of grass, more than any other game).Even undervolted and underclocked, the temps can get up to about 83C, and that's with the fan spinning loud. Less taxing parts of the game will let the fan spin at a low speed, but not at stock voltages/clocks.

 

The next PC I build next summer will surely be watercooled I think, these temperature differences will be just too much to ignore, plus I won't have to worry as much about dusty fans in difficult places to clean (only radiator fans ).

 

What a beautiful waterblock!

 

I'd be replacing the TIM if I was getting temps like that, doesn't feel right.

 

Won't Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 690 eats 3 slots?

 

These are two of the "best" ways to cool your GPU. Or you can slap one of those (H60): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Rj3HuG2Sg and give it a go

 

My 680 is liquid cooled. Noise-wise it was ok on air but temps of 83c don't impress me. It's been down to 11c on liquid and average gaming when overclocked +175mhz and +500mhz vram is 35 to 40c. Liquid cooling hasn't allowed me to push the clocks up at all. If I go beyond those clock speeds I get crashes on benchmark. In other words adding a waterblock hasn't improved overclock one bit. What it gives is silent cooling and much lower temps = greater lifespan.

 

""Firstly, we’ve seen more than a few pieces of hardware die over the years that we suspect may have succumbed to prolonged periods of heavy use and high temperatures. Beefing up the cooling on offer can potentially lead to a longer life for your hardware. ""

Although this is likely to be more true than false I cant help but think that if temperatures of cards especially those you pay over £300 for should come with the best cooling possible from the manufacturers/Nvidia surely? That or give warranties of 5 years or more like they now do with cars. It seems like a massive gamble that 3 years down the line your once dominate card cant just 'burn out' as it were. I find that if the companies are gonna offer these monsters they should like new cars offer something to keep people at ease. No one used to buy KIA cars due to the unknown nature of lifetime - hence their warranty issue of 7 years for their vehicles - which now turn out to be quite competitive offerings for motor vehicles. But as something mechanical/electrical and being part of our 'pride and joy' of our lives this is something these companies need to start offering for more people with the cash in their wallets being allowed out to play.

 

Great article and thank you! I suggested it a while ago, don't know if this is due to that but it's been a good insight and everyone's comments are helpful.
I'm still not sure if water is the best option for me as it's a big outlay to cool CPU and GPU, but the next build will have it from the start, on the recommendation of this. My 6880 is loud just watching T.V as it's used as a media centre in the bedroom, but also a gaming PC. It does go near silent in windows when using word or surfing the web. No one said about the noise in reviews when I bought it, so I do want to do something about it, plus it's something to gain experience for modding.
Thank you again!

 

I would like to see more of these type of reviews, I have been looking for a good cooler for my SLI 460's for a while now, there don't seem to be many decent reviews of this sort of thing especially for mid-range cards like mine. Any suggestions from the community here would be appreciated.