Are AIO GPU's worth it?

[Broski_Oski]

Hey guys I been having this dilemma for the past week, wanting to buy 1080TI, I have chosen ZOTAC AMP EXTREME as it looks to have best cooling capabilites, but I have also seen this MSI Sea Hawk X.
Now the question is , which one is going to be better?

I know the temps will be lower which im happy for, but I've also heard there are some problems with VRAM cooling on these hybrids..

I dont mind spending extra £80 if its really worth it.

 

[Gregster]

I had a Fury X which had an AIO cooler and it was superb. Very quiet and ran pretty cool.

 

[stulid]

I do wonder about longevity VS a air cooled one.

 

[CapitalOne]

I put AIO coolers on my maxwell Titan X pair, on air they were loud and 80c, on the AIO they are near silent and 50C - well worth it!

 

[RanxZy]

I prefer AIO coolers but the SeaHawk version has been made with little effort. Pretty much just plodded an AIO on a reference card and charging through the roof for it.

I would rather get a top aftermarket air cooled card like the Aorus or wait for the EVGA Hybrid (could be a very long wait).

 

[darket]

I do wonder about longevity VS a air cooled one.

Agreed, I've said this before, Aio coolers should have a best before date, i was cleaning out one of my systems the other day and couldn't work out why on earth the heat spreaders of my ram sticks had fallen off, fired it up and checked the temps, 75 degrees at idle on a Corsair H110 GTX, this will be the 4th AIO cooler thats failed on me with near devastating results, took it out and it appears it has little to no coolant in it, cant spot the leak but the pump and fans were running fine, pasted it up and remounted it, ran a few benches and the system went into a thermal shut down, took it out replaced with a Noctua NH-D15, better temps than the GTX when it was new , MUCH quieter and even if the fans were to fail it wont try to nuke the pc !

 

[dessimpson]

Been running two Maxwell Titan-X's on EVGA AIO's for about 18 months and they're great. Pretty much silent and never go above the 50's when gaming.

 

[geordiejc]

Been running two Maxwell Titan-X's on EVGA AIO's for about 18 months and they're great. Pretty much silent and never go above the 50's when gaming.

Can you buy AIO solutions and remove the FE shroud for installation ? If so which Aio ate available for the 1080 ti ?

 

[Besty]

I dont mind spending extra £80 if its really worth it.

The Seahawk X is not worth it, the Gigabyte Waterforce will be (when it appears).

 

[geordiejc]

Good read : http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreview...force-review-vs-evga-hybrid-seahawk?showall=1

 

[ALXAndy]

I too have a Titan XM on an EVGA hybrid. Well worth it. As said, temps never go above 50s and mine will do 1414mhz on stock volts.

As for the AIO longevity? it should last the lifetime of the GPU easily.

 

[Mayh3M]

I too am very picky about noise and temperature. That's why I waited a painful four months for my EVGA 1080 Hybrid.

I chose the EVGA over the Sea Hawk because the Sea Hawk uses the reference blower cooler for the VRM which is straight up loud and does not complement the AIO at all.

I chose the Zotac this time around partly because I don't want to wait so long again. The main reason though is that the AMP Extreme has a massive cooler and by all accounts cools extremely well at a relatively low noise level.

Also, these GPU AIOs are unfortunately very audible at idle because of the pump noise.

 

[flinco]

I would not buy an AIO cooler. Air coolers do a good enough job. Not worth the risk of a leak if you like to use the components for many years.

 

[Broski_Oski]

Thanks guys, ill stick with AIR , what could you guys reccomend I have two options, MSI gaming X for £760 or the Zotac AMP EXTREME for £810? Or maybe wait for EVGA FTW?

 

[Trusty]

2 years extra warranty for £50? Zotac for sure

 

[bimbleuk]

Can you buy AIO solutions and remove the FE shroud for installation ? If so which Aio ate available for the 1080 ti ?

The EVGA AIO upgrade fits the 980/1080/1080 Ti Ref/FE boards.

Gamers Nexus documented it and use one in all their benchmarks. My 980 Ti reference has been running one for 18 months and I bought another (AIO upgrade kit) when EVGA were discounting them to $50 a while back intending to fit that to a 1080 Ti FE but I'm just waiting on AMD.

I also have 15 RX 480 GPUs and they run 24/7 and will always be using air coolers.

 

[Brazo]

I would get the amp extreme.

On the std 1080 its 0db under light load and 29db under high load.

Any AIO version will have both pump noise and fan noise and from experience tend to be louder at least when under light load.

I don't get the fascination with temps, it's just a numbers game in people's heads. As long as the card isn't throttling unduly (bear in mind this starts at 32c!) then you really don't have an issue.

 

[andybird123]

based on the a lot of the horror stories of AIO's failing, I would either stick with air or go full water - the initial cost is higher with water (even then you can get most bits cheap 2nd hand), get a GPU core only block and it will mostly all carry over to a new GPU - the one thing I had to do with the 1080ti was to get a copper shim as I wanted to keep the VRAM/VRM shroud on and my core only block was made to fit directly to the GPU surround - temps are still sub 55C so its working for me

 

[bakes0310]

Made me nervous about my EVGA 1080 ftw hybrid. But it's with anything, everything can go wrong or it might not. I've had a few aio CPU coolers over the years and they have all been great.

 

[AiiR]

I'd argue that its more worthwhile putting an AIO on your gpu than your cpu. You can get a sub £50 heatsink for your cpu and experience near silent operation, but it definitaly takes an AIO to achieve near silence on a GPU.