EVGA Hybrid water cooler vs default fan cooler

[wehler53]

Hi all,

I recently purchased a 1080ti to replace my 980ti. The 980 had been in a custom loop for about two years, and I have decided not to do a new custom loop, risk vs reward over closed loops just doesn't quite make it worthwhile for me. Anyway, im anything but a fan of fan noise (really who is) and all my fans are quite series Corsair fans, however I have an EVGA founders edition card (mainly because I love the EVGA reference look). But it certainly makes enough noise to be heard through my open back headphones while gaming. Im about to replace my screen with own that requires more graphics so it'll only get louder.

My question is, I can buy the hybrid kits from EVGA to have a closed water cooling loop on it, whilst I wish they made the body in similar style to their reference cards it still looks rather good. So does anyone know from experience with these or other closed loops for GPUs how well they work? Temp vs the default fan? Overclocking temps? (I know this varies card to card)

 

[n0ns3ns3]

well, the problem with "closed" loops (with couple of exceptions) is they are literally crap. Anemic pump, aluminum radiators, mediocre fans, very basic cold plates.
when it comes to video cards, they cool only the GPU. the rest (vram and vrm) is cooled by air - not ideal as VRM gets really hot, but the thermal sensor is on GPU which liquid cooled - so fan curve can not be set to optimal. you still have the same (or almost the same) fan on hybrid kits + additional small fan on 120mm rad. if you look at cooling capacity of a good rad, you will see that in order to dissipate 200wats requires difference between coolant and air of about 10C while fans are running close to 2000RPM - that's loud.
If you want silent, slap a full cover block and have at least 240 rad per component. For CPU + GPU = at least 240+240 if you want both cool and quiet.
P.S.
Corsair's SP fans are overrated (marketing BS). There is nothing better than Noctua's NF-F12 for rads that i'm aware of.