[quotemsg=18029761,0,1943658][quotemsg=18029180,0,1712875][quotemsg=18029149,0,1943658][quotemsg=18029043,0,1712875]Everybody who just bought the Founder's Edition is probably crapping their pants right now. Controllable LEDs that can even adjust based on temperatures, fan controllable ports, better and probably quieter cooling system, the OC version has way better stock clock rates. All $60 cheaper for the OC edition and $80 cheaper for the normal edition.[/quotemsg]
Nvidia said that partner boards would sell for as low as $599 while Founders edition cards will be $699.
If you're crapping your pants over that, you weren't paying attention to the announcements.
Founders Edition will be easier to watercool, at least for the time being, and the blower coolers are better suited for SLI.
There's reason to go with Founders, but if you don't fit those two niche categories, than an overclocked partner card will be a better choice. [/quotemsg]
I did pay attention to the announcements, and I know the afermarket cards are cheaper. This is exactly my point: non-founders cards are cheaper and better. I'm not crapping my pants; people who bought the founder's edition are.
Watercooling? What purpose is there to watercool a 180W card like the 1080? Even overclocked heavily it's only 225W, and as testing has shown. Watercooling is a complete gimmick. People cry for more efficient cards then they want to watercool for reasons that don't make sense to me. The only reason to watercool any Pascal GPU is to make the computer look nice and to tell your friends it is watercooled. The days where watercooling had true benefits are practically over; some CPUs may need watercooling for heavy overclocking, like a 5960X, but our modern day GPUs have no problem with air.[/quotemsg]
I very much disagree with this assessment. There's a reason that GPUs have started coming with closed loop coolers pre-attached. There's also a reason these modern coolers a gigantic, usually with three large fans. Modern GPU's put off significant amounts of heat, and from what I've seen (haven't played wiht a 1080 in person yet) it appears as though the smaller die size (ie: less contact surface with the heatsink) is causing these Pascal GPUs to run rather hot. Water cooling dramatically reduces the overall temperature of your GPU at both idle and load. You may not be able to achieve significantly higher clock speeds with water than you would with air, but you will get to the same or better speeds at much lower temperatures, which in turn results in longer GPU life. Electronics tend to operate better, and for longer periods, when they run at lower temperatures.
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But watercooling usually negatively affects the VRMs in terms of heat. The chip itself stays cooler, but all the other stuff on the card gets hotter, depending on how the block is. Some blocks may do very well, but a lot of them leave out some important components to cool; I'd reckon VRMs fail long before the actual graphics processing unit.