Asus ROG Ares III Card Comes With Full-Cover Water Block

[N.Broekhuijsen]

Asus' ROG Ares III graphics card moves to a fully-water cooled design.

Asus ROG Ares III Card Comes With Full-Cover Water Block : Read more

 

[Gam3r01]

Very impressive to see this card down to one expansion slot!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Wow .... handpicked GPUs and water cooling manage a 1.18% overclock ... whooo whoooo. !

 

[dovah-chan]

I wish I could afford this At least produce an ROG or ARES branded EKWB block for us humans.

Anyways I love seeing MARS or ARES cards. It's so cool just seeing Asus engineers going wild and pushing the limits of what they can do with the current times technology.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Looks great .... even like the suitcase

Custom PCB
Great Power Delivery
Great Water Block (Unlike the EVGA Hydrocopper which runs 30C hotter on VRM than other blocks)
Hand Picked GPUs

And what do we get ? .....

1030 MHz rather than the reference 1018 MHz. ....a whopping 12 MHz ???
memory runs at an effective speed of 5.0 GHz ... not impressed

The Asus 780 is similar in that it goes to 889 Mhz instead of reference 865 with a custom PCB and memory is a the reference 6008 ... I have OC'd them to 1100 (> 1250 on boost) and taken memory up over 7.4 Ghz ..... with all that room, why doesn't Asus give us a lil more in the box ?

Seems w/ all that effort the factory OC shuda been sumthin to brag about rather than a hair above reference .... the design is gorgeous tho and size is impressive.

 

[DarkSable]

Okay... I'm sorry guys, but this is huge. Yeah, it's a card with a prebuilt waterblock on it...

But it's a SINGLE SLOT card with a prebuilt waterblock on it. As a guy who loves making his system smaller and smaller, this card is suddenly very very very attractive.

 

[DarkSable]

Wow .... handpicked GPUs and water cooling manage a 1.18% overclock ... whooo whoooo. !

You have no bloody idea what kind of overclock it can achieve.

It's probably so conservative because there's no guarantee that it's going in a system that's got enough radspace to cool it effectively. Just like buying any factory overclocked card, you have no idea what it can do until you push it.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

You have no bloody idea what kind of overclock it can achieve.

It's probably so conservative because there's no guarantee that it's going in a system that's got enough radspace to cool it effectively. Just like buying any factory overclocked card, you have no idea what it can do until you push it.

OK, but what does that have to do with my post ? What I was referring to is all that effort for what ? Big deal...... limited production run which manages a measly 1% OC ? Does any other manufacturer do that ? Ever seen an EVGA Classified w/ a 1% factory OC ?

I wasn't addressing what clock it might be able to achieve, irrelevant to the topic at hand. The point is everybody else does better why is Asus the ONLY manufacturer who needs to be so conservative. I expanded on this very clearly in the following post; your comment is irrelevant to that point.

why doesn't Asus give us a lil more in the box ?

The "point" I am addressing if that look at every single Asus card's clock and look what everybody else has .... MSI has gone back to reference PCBs, EVGA never did anything else w/ their SC series and yet despite that extra hardware and technology, Asus's offerings are orders of magnitude below the competition.

780 Ti = Asus 954 / MSI 1020 / Gigabyte 1080 / EVGA 1006 ... why is Asus 5% lower ?
780 = Asus 889 / MSI 954 / Gigabyte 954 / EVGA 967 ... why is Asus 7% lower ?
770 = Asus 1058 / MSI 1137 / Gigabyte 1137 / EVGA 1111 . ... why is Asus 7 % lower ?

I know what the Asus cards can do cause I have 7 of them here at home. But since the 670, they have failed to offer a product that comes outta the box with a lead.

 

[DarkSable]

^ I see what you're saying, but...

do out of the box speeds matter that much? I mean, for the people who won't overclock, yeah, they make a bit of a difference, but for those of us who do, they're arbitrary, and not telling of what final performance is going to be.

And a card that's being sold which can only go into a custom water loop... I would hope that it would be well-overclocked by the user.

I understand the gripe, I'm just not sure that it's something to actually complain about when the company produces good cards with great coolers and usually very good PCB designs.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Oh no argument there .... still it makes me doubt their direction. The 670 DCII TOP was the greatest card evah IMO.....techpowerup gave it the only 10.0 ever. But their 7xx series has been disappointing. I shook my head every time someone wanted me to build with EVGA SC series and I found it burdensome to always have to repeat the same web searches showing VRM failures on the EVGA 570s ... why was EVGA the only one of the big 4 who didn't use a custom PCB w/ beefed up VRMs.

But now w/ nVidia having put both physical and legal barriers as to what 3rd paty vendors can do with voltages, the logic of a custom PCB is harder to justify. The original MSI 780 was a 2nd place finisher in most tests to Asus but the new MSI 780 kicks tail. I use the Asus 780 in WC builds and the MSI 780 in AC builds cause the MSI is much quieter.

In my own box, I have the twin 780s down from my original OC as my son (he's a pilot) likes to play Flight Sims and BF4 on my box after I'm snorin' .... BF4 manages to crash the GFX driver when nothing else does.... so I have about a 26% OC on the core and 21 % on the memory. The run about 44c under Furmark and 39C if i turn the rad fans to max..... I was lucky .... both my 780s have Samsung memory.

But the thing is, MSI has managed to compete here with a quieter card using a reference PCB. Now it has to be mentioned that this is not the old nVidia PCB .,... it's a bit beefier with better VRM and unless ya play little tricks like thy do with the Classy and Lightning, we are not seeing better overclocks than the reference boards.

It just seems to me that "they are resting on their laurels" a bit. And while they still rule the MoBo segment at $250 and up, I can't make a recommendation for an Asus board under $225 ..... their boards are comparable to the competition and they do have the best BIOS IMO, but I am not gonna pay $545 for a Z97 Hero w/ 4790k when I can get the Z97 GD65 w/ the 4790k for $465.

They have also had some quality problems .... RMAs are up in recent years .... the Z87 boards are still dealing with the BIOS Clock Freeze Bug which is now showing up in Z97 boards too. Things used to easy .... for over 10 years I bought nothing but Asus MoBos, Asus GFX cards and Asus Opticals .... after reading all the tests and reviews, always felt that I was getting the best product for the money .

Now when I read reviews like this where the MSI 780 Ti gets a 9.9 rating (2nd only to the aforementioned 670 TOP), and the Asus gets the lowest rating (9.4) ya just gotta wonder what direction the company is going....especially after a year wrestling with the BIOS Clock Freeze bug ... two fixes announces, latter being a new BIOS (announced June 11) that Asus never actually released as described and will not address whether the BIOSs released since fix the problem or even acknowledge that there was a BIOS fix.

But straying way off topic ... the card is damn pretty, the small size is great and with the EK block it will render the poorly performing hydrocopper irrelevant. Hopefully we'll see an 880 like this. Just wish they had the confidence to turn heads and make it look like they making performance and leading the pack a priority.

 

[palladin9479]

Great Water Block (Unlike the EVGA Hydrocopper which runs 30C hotter on VRM than other blocks)

Huh... I really don't get where this is coming from. I have 2 EVGA GTX 780 Hydrocopper's and I can assure you there is zero VRM problems. They even did the same thing EVGA did with their 5 and 6 series, make them a single slot (something I wish they would of done for their 7 series). The only poor Hydrocopper design I can remember was the original 580 Hydrocopper which was later replaced by the 580 Hydrocopper 2. I happen to have two of the 580 Hydrocopper 2 FTW's inside by closet right now and they performed great.

Anyhow this is going to be pretty big for custom WC guys. Single slot ridiculously high performance card, allows for two of them in a loop with large rads and a solid pump/res.

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20131107_210842_zps8ce924b3.jpg

:Edit:
After scouring the internet I see where the confusion came from. The Hydrocopper block was a swifttech komodo which doesn't include active cooling for the VRMs, everyone thought all their blocks would be this way. The Hydrocopper classified on the other hand has active cooling for the VRMs. And the Hydrocopper wasn't 30C worse then every other, only 30C from the Hydrocopper and the EK, it was 10~20 from the rest of the pack but had better performance in cooling the GPU chip. The only case where this would present a problem is if you were volt modding on a standard card, in which case just use a classified card.

 

[SkyBill40]

It's sexy looking and all... but at what cost and at what performance when compared to the now reduced 295X? An added bonus of the 295 is that it already comes with a cooling solution whereas this requires a custom loop. Why? Because this is supposed to be "uber l337 high end" or something?

If I had the money, need, and want for a card like this... I'd probably just but the 295 and call it good. Or, better yet, get two 780Ti's and SLI them. To each their own, I guess.

 

[palladin9479]

This will have horrible cost vs performance, just like all other high end parts. WCing in general imposes a premium on a system that isn't in line with it's additional cost. A custom loop by itself will run you several hundred USD. The point of parts like these are for the super high end crowd that needs one of two things, either super high overclocking or super quiet high performance systems. Many are part of the former crowd and will push these parts to insane levels while I'm part of the latter crowd and want to game without fan sounds ruining my immersion.

 

[DarkSable]

This will have horrible cost vs performance, just like all other high end parts. WCing in general imposes a premium on a system that isn't in line with it's additional cost. A custom loop by itself will run you several hundred USD. The point of parts like these are for the super high end crowd that needs one of two things, either super high overclocking or super quiet high performance systems. Many are part of the former crowd and will push these parts to insane levels while I'm part of the latter crowd and want to game without fan sounds ruining my immersion.

Yep. Or you can be a member of both.

No, I feel you though; I spend a premium on watercooling because I'm both an audiophile and a high-resource user. I want to be able to listen to music on my sound system while still doing 3d modeling and not hear my computer. It's just a bonus that it applies to gaming with headphones even more. (And that it's both attractive and makes for an interesting challenge combined with my love of small form factor systems.)

 

[The_Icon]

Very impressive piece of engineering. Can't believe they made a single slot version of two monster GPUs.

 

[PandaButtonFTW]

But can it run Crysis?

 

[el_bastardo74]

Got some Nvidia fanboys trolling hard up in here...

Since when does someone being critical of a certain product mean that they are fanboys of the competition?

 

[PandaButtonFTW]

Got some Nvidia fanboys trolling hard up in here...

Since when does someone being critical of a certain product mean that they are fanboys of the competition?

it does when the accuser is a fanboy of criticised products company

 

[yvgamer94]

To be honest, i would like to have that Numbered 1 card and showcase it as a wall display. It just looks so nice but i would like to throw it in my rig too ahahha.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Great Water Block (Unlike the EVGA Hydrocopper which runs 30C hotter on VRM than other blocks)

Huh... I really don't get where this is coming from. I have 2 EVGA GTX 780 Hydrocopper's and I can assure you there is zero VRM problems. They even did the same thing EVGA did with their 5 and 6 series, make them a single slot (something I wish they would of done for their 7 series). The only poor Hydrocopper design I can remember was the original 580 Hydrocopper which was later replaced by the 580 Hydrocopper 2. I happen to have two of the 580 Hydrocopper 2 FTW's inside by closet right now and they performed great.

Anyhow this is going to be pretty big for custom WC guys. Single slot ridiculously high performance card, allows for two of them in a loop with large rads and a solid pump/res.

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20131107_210842_zps8ce924b3.jpg

:Edit:
After scouring the internet I see where the confusion came from. The Hydrocopper block was a swifttech komodo which doesn't include active cooling for the VRMs, everyone thought all their blocks would be this way. The Hydrocopper classified on the other hand has active cooling for the VRMs. And the Hydrocopper wasn't 30C worse then every other, only 30C from the Hydrocopper and the EK, it was 10~20 from the rest of the pack but had better performance in cooling the GPU chip. The only case where this would present a problem is if you were volt modding on a standard card, in which case just use a classified card.

It comes from published reviews. EVGA manages a 1C advantage over the EK temp by sacrificing 10C on the VRAM and 30C on the VRM. The Titan, 780 and 780 Ti all use the same water block.

EVGA manages a 1C advantage over the EK temp by sacrificing 10C on the VRAM and 30C on the VRM.

Don't understand the need for single slot since MoBios provide at least two slot spacing between PCI-E 3 slots. Here's two 780s in a parallel loop, overclocked 25% and memory 21% with large rads and and two solid pumps

GPU temps are 39C (Delta T of 15C) on GPU.... mid 50's on VRAM and VRM (30 - 33 Delta T ) and that's before adding 2nd set of fans to the rads.

 

[DarkSable]

Don't understand the need for single slot since MoBios provide at least two slot spacing between PCI-E 3 slots. Here's two 780s in a parallel loop, overclocked 25% and memory 21% with large rads and and two solid pumps

GPU temps are 39C (Delta T of 15C) on GPU.... mid 50's on VRAM and VRM (30 - 33 Delta T ) and that's before adding 2nd set of fans to the rads.

Size. Yeah, you've got an awesome rig there, with an unbelievable overclock... but for those of us who like small form factor computers, it's ridiculously large and unwieldy.

Most of us don't want to be using even a mATX motherboard, much less a full sized or extended ATX board. We want to cram as much performance as possible in as little space as possible and be able to pick it up, take it to a friends' house, and say, "Bet your xbox can't do this."

The reason this is huge for me, at least, is because it opens up a lot of very tiny single-slot media pc cases that use PCIe risers to make the thing smaller.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I didn't think there was a ITX board available in Z97 that did twin GFX cards

MicroATX has a half dozen or so but they all provide for double slot cards AFAIK. I guess I'm just not seeing what the single slot design offers in the typical card spacing scenario. I mean it's great that it fits in a single slot, but there's no MoBo that can take advantage of it. The only reason that most WC cards have 1.5 slots is that space is used to supply the multiple port connections.

Now if we talking just 1 GFX card, something like the Asus Impact, I gotta wonder with most of those tiny cases .... will give you difficulty with card length and getting enough rads in to cool the thing.

With 580 watts from the card .... and 140 from an OC'd CPU..... with some rather loud 1800 rpm fans in push / pull, you'd need about 5 or 6 x 120mm of rad to keep the ah heck at 10C Delta T ... where ya fit that in a mini ITX case ?

If that seems high.... think about it this way .... if a H100i is good for a 140 watt OC's Haswell CPU, you'd need two H100i's for each 290 watt GPU

 

[palladin9479]

Spoiler

Great Water Block (Unlike the EVGA Hydrocopper which runs 30C hotter on VRM than other blocks)

Huh... I really don't get where this is coming from. I have 2 EVGA GTX 780 Hydrocopper's and I can assure you there is zero VRM problems. They even did the same thing EVGA did with their 5 and 6 series, make them a single slot (something I wish they would of done for their 7 series). The only poor Hydrocopper design I can remember was the original 580 Hydrocopper which was later replaced by the 580 Hydrocopper 2. I happen to have two of the 580 Hydrocopper 2 FTW's inside by closet right now and they performed great.

Anyhow this is going to be pretty big for custom WC guys. Single slot ridiculously high performance card, allows for two of them in a loop with large rads and a solid pump/res.

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20131107_210842_zps8ce924b3.jpg

:Edit:
After scouring the internet I see where the confusion came from. The Hydrocopper block was a swifttech komodo which doesn't include active cooling for the VRMs, everyone thought all their blocks would be this way. The Hydrocopper classified on the other hand has active cooling for the VRMs. And the Hydrocopper wasn't 30C worse then every other, only 30C from the Hydrocopper and the EK, it was 10~20 from the rest of the pack but had better performance in cooling the GPU chip. The only case where this would present a problem is if you were volt modding on a standard card, in which case just use a classified card.

It comes from published reviews. EVGA manages a 1C advantage over the EK temp by sacrificing 10C on the VRAM and 30C on the VRM. The Titan, 780 and 780 Ti all use the same water block.

EVGA manages a 1C advantage over the EK temp by sacrificing 10C on the VRAM and 30C on the VRM.

Don't understand the need for single slot since MoBios provide at least two slot spacing between PCI-E 3 slots. Here's two 780s in a parallel loop, overclocked 25% and memory 21% with large rads and and two solid pumps

GPU temps are 39C (Delta T of 15C) on GPU.... mid 50's on VRAM and VRM (30 - 33 Delta T ) and that's before adding 2nd set of fans to the rads.

Why do you guys always shoot off without reading all of a post first. I mentioned at the end that the Hydro Copper and Hydro Classified blocks were different and that the Classified ones did have VRM cooling. People reviewed the Hydro Copper and just thought they were all the same. They also created a non-issue.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1411500/official-evga-classified-owners-club/2370#post_20878369

As the the VRM's themselves, there still isn't an issue. You won't have any problems unless your doing some crazy volt modding, in which case get the classified.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I did read the post but I base my purchase decisions on actual test results, facts and an understanding the difference between reference and no-reference PCBs rather than brand loyalty. VRM is **THE** issue when it comes to GFX cards. Why do you think Asus, Gigabyte, MSI etc. all went to custom PCBs with their factory overclocked cards (EVGA SC was the only major holdout using stock PCB's thu 5xx, 6xx and 7xx series) ?

Do all the cards have the same GPU ? Yes, they do.
Do all the cards have the same VRM ? No, they don't.

So why was it that certain brands were failing and others weren't ????? Why was it that 98% of the failures were on reference PCBs ? Why is it that manufacturer's invested in custom PCBs and beefed up VRMs if the VRM wasn't the weak spot ? Thankfully, nVidia now has redesigned the reference PCB, beefing up the VRM. NVidia also tightened down what you can do both physically and legally with their vendors which, combined with the new PCB/ VRM design has some vendors starting with late 7xx releases, going back to using it.

There was a slew of failures when overclocking EVGA SC and other reference PCB based cards with the 5xx series. The problem was easy to avoid. If you were overclocking, make sure you got a card with a non-refernce PCB that had a beefed up VRM. The GPUs were not failing, the VRMs were.

As for the blocks being different, of course the Classified block is different, but not for the reason you state. The Classified has a custom PCB .... and it requires a different block layout just like every other no reference card on the market (i.e Asus DCII, Gigabyte Windforce, HOF and all other non -reference cards). This is not because it adds some design feature not on the reference card, it's simply and only because the board has a different layout and the the reference block won't line up with what it has too cool on the non reference PCB. This is clearly shown in the images below the back sides are different in the two models that I can find pictures of but the parts **touching the card** differ only in where the contact points are located.

EK Water Block for EVGA Classified:

EK Water Block for EVGA SC: