Discussion Best GPU brand?

[Dj0gany]

Full loop, 2x 240mm (standard 30mm Hardware Labs 240 GTS and an ultra slim Tx240 20mm, the one on bottom by xspc).




Airflow? What airflow? Lol. Yes, tiny. But I have enough cooling capacity to handle a 5800x/3080 and not break a sweat.

What's not on the pic of the top-down view is the Noctua fan extension cable I stuck on the cmos pins and sits next to the psu switch, because those pins were buried by the 20+4 cabling. Genius idea lol.

Make 2 cutouts on the top and you have a toaster 😄
Im just kidding, a really nice, compact sistem : )
Soft tubing was the key to it all, wasnt it?
I cant imagine it being air cooled.

 

[Dj0gany]

This might be a dumb question, but is it louder than a normal atx system?

 

[Karadjgne]

It's dead silent. And I do mean that. At idle, the fans are @ 500rpm, at loads only reach @ 800rpm.

Its the single biggest misconception there is about liquid cooling. Most assume that fans need to run full speed, but with a radiator having exponentially more surface area than any aircooler, the capacity for cooling and the efficiency of cooling is also far greater. So while actual temps may vary according to the effective pairing of rad and fans, the greater capacity means temp curves are somewhat different.

At 200w, the NH-D15 is approaching 80% capacity, at which point temp curves go sharply upwards to 250w. A 280mm AIO at 200w is closer to 60% capacity. Still has plenty of room. Much shallower curve, lower temps in comparison.

Meaning the fans are going to spin far slower. And quieter, especially if they are decent fans to begin with.

Undeniable fact. You cannot over-cool a cpu. Excess cooling ability results is ability to lower fan speeds, and therefor noise. An i3 with a NH-D15 means the fans would barely be moving, no matter what load was applied.

My rads are designed for low rpm fans. Thir best efficiency is @ 700-800rpm. They get better temps at higher rpm, but the efficiency drops off with every rpm over @ 800, so temps don't drop as quickly. Some rads are designed for higher rpm fans, they do lousy at low rpm but drop temps faster with 1800rpm or more. There's much more to rad design and fan pairing with a loop vs an AIO leads ppl to believe. Often times Noctua isn't the best fan for the job, even if they are the best fans.

 

[Karadjgne]

Msi had its ups and downs. They were very good for many years in the lower tier stuff, they made a lot of money from HP and other 3rd party prebuilts as they supplied motherboards, as did gigabyte and asus, but there seemed to be a change in leadership a few years back and customer service went downhill fast. That sprouted the 2 old men with a beer in a garage as customer service rumors. Then leadership must have changed again, especially around the time of the GTX970, because they were the gpu to have. And customer service was great. Now, new leadership again, and if gamersnexus is right, they'll be looking to revamp leadership again. A lot of restructuring will be needed or they'll be right back to anonymously providing motherboards to HP to stay afloat.

 

[spentshells]

Here is my two cents
EVGA just makes good cards
sapphire has always been good
Asus is falling in quality every new series of cards
MSI very functional quality coolers, but the software for leds is a nightmare
Gigabyte... I wouldn't buy a gpu from them, there are so many failed cards from the NV 10 series I'd say like 70% of failures I've either heard about or seen have been GB


Powercolor while they have been around a long time, the low end models even of the high end chips are in my experience poorly built BUT I haven't seen one in a few years

 

[Karadjgne]

Here's the thing about Powercolor and other 2nd tier brand names. They are mostly all the same thing. Reference boards with a different cooler and different clocks. You can buy a base model and possibly crank it to FTW levels if you win the silicon lottery, but cooling will suck. And it's the cooler that makes or breaks those boards. Very few use custom pcbs, while almost all higher end 1st tier use nothing but custom pcbs, better capable components, oversized cooling etc. That's reflected in the price differences.