Question GPU cooling design (Which is better?)

[_raehln_]

Hi all,

I am planning to upgrade to a new GPU soon and I am trying to decide between these two cooling designs.

EVGA - 2080ti FTW Ultra Hybird

• AIO and air cooled
• 120mm radiator

GIGABYTE - 2080ti AORUS AIO

• AIO ONLY
• 240mm radiator

Will a hybrid cooling system provide better cooling than a pure liquid cooled with a radiator twice a big?

 

[Gam3r01]

The EVGA card cools the GPU with water, and the surrounding VRAM and circuitry with air.

The Gigabyte card cools the GPU the same, but has the VRAM and circuitry under a large metal plate that directs heat to the GPU water block to be cooled by water as well.

From a design standpoint, the Gigabyte card should technically offer better performance from a design standpoint, but in practice Im not sure.

 

[geofelt]

What is the rest of your system?
How will you cool your cpu?
Does price matter to you?

The cooler probably matters little.
What you get will be appropriate to the card.

My guess is that a 120mm aio will be easier to install and the difference in fps or whatever will not be very different among all of the factory overclocked RTX2080ti cards.

 

[_raehln_]

The EVGA card cools the GPU with water, and the surrounding VRAM and circuitry with air.

The Gigabyte card cools the GPU the same, but has the VRAM and circuitry under a large metal plate that directs heat to the GPU water block to be cooled by water as well.

From a design standpoint, the Gigabyte card should technically offer better performance from a design standpoint, but in practice Im not sure.

Thank you for the detail on how the coolers work.

 

[_raehln_]

What is the rest of your system?
How will you cool your cpu?
Does price matter to you?

My system consists of - -
Case: corsair 280x
Mobo: msi mpg z390
Cpu: i7-8700k
RAM: 2x 16GB
Fans: 140mm corsair ML
Cpu cooler is corsair 115i platinum (280mm AIO)

The idea for cooling will be,
CPU radiator on the top of the case as exhaust.
GPU cooler on bottom of the case as exhaust.
2 fans on the front of the case for air intake.
There is also a fan placement on the second compartment of the 280x case that can have a mother intake fan. It is on the backside of the motherboard towards the front of the case.

I'm a novice when it comes to building pcs, does that airflow make sense?

 

[geofelt]

Just me, but I would not have used liquid at all.

My thought would be to use the cpu radiator in front drawing in clear outside air.
That lets you filter the incoming air.
If all the incoming air is from one point and is filtered, your parts will stay clean.
Use the gpu aio cooler as exhaust, either the 120 or 280 version.

 

[FreakenEpic]

Gigabyte will provide better cooling as it water cools everything instead of only the core being cooled. Also, the water cooling on the GPU VRMsl allow you to get higher clocks if you are planning to OC (even tho the RTX series cards are horrible at it)

 

[Gam3r01]

Gigabyte will provide better cooling as it water cools everything instead of only the core being cooled. Also, the water cooling on the GPU VRMsl allow you to get higher clocks if you are planning to OC (even tho the RTX series cards are horrible at it)

Thats a distinction that needs to be made, the gigabyte card does not water cool anything but the GPU. The other components are simply under a heatsink that transfers heat into the loop, they themselves are not water cooled and are still limited by the same metal heat capacity as a conventional heatsink, the only difference is how it dissipates that heat.

 

[Gmoney06ss]

If you want full cover water cooling you'll need to go with an ek vector block, as it appears to fully cool all components. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% sure the vrm is also watercooled. The evga full cover hydro copper block may also do the same. Either way performance between the cards will be very close.

 

[Karadjgne]

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3367-rtx-2080-ti-hybrid-results-nvidia-power-limitations

The cooler makes a difference really only to temps and noise, and there's not much variation between a full block and aio/fan block. You'll be able to field better clocks with the full hybrid, so synthetic bench will show better results, but it seems vbios power limit restrictions will stump most ability on those cards in game. That is unless you can flash the vbios with a higher power limit. Like moving from stock 115% upto 130%.

 

[_raehln_]

Just me, but I would not have used liquid at all.

My thought would be to use the cpu radiator in front drawing in clear outside air.
That lets you filter the incoming air.
If all the incoming air is from one point and is filtered, your parts will stay clean.
Use the gpu aio cooler as exhaust, either the 120 or 280 version.

I am assuming you mean filter dust and particles and such?
That is smart and something I didn't consider radiators doing when using liquid cooling.

My case (corsair 280x) has built in filters in the case, they are easy to remove and clean. They honestly aren't the most amazing and definitely don't keep out all dust and particles. But dust collection is significantly reduced with them.

Considering that my case have filters would you still opt to put the radiator on the front for intake?

My reasoning behind having outtake going through rads and intake solely fans is that I know radiators will slow airflow. So my idea was increase intake of airflow because outtake will be reduced. That way plenty of air will still be able to get into the case.

If the radiator is on the front, will it be okay that it is reducing airflow intake? Should I have front and bottom as intake and top as outtake? Both intake going through rads, that way intake is not reduced too much


Also thank you for the information you've given me, I really appreciate the help

 

[Karadjgne]

Air is air. It doesn't disappear. If a fan is putting out 50cfm, it won't matter if it's going through a rad or not, you still get 50cfm. Where rads affect airflow is in distance. A fan that's not blocked by any obstruction stands a good chance of putting a decent amount of air directly to the back of the case. Through a rad at intake, that rarely ever happens if the fans are in push. If the fans are in pull, there's no difference with or without the rad. However, if there's decent exhaust, it'll create a low pressure area in front of the fans, so any air inside the case will flow in that direction anyways, taking gpu heat with it. So while you may not get a breeze you can feel, there's still air going over to the back, pushed by incoming air from the rad. Doesn't take very long at all for 50 cubic feet of air to exchange in a case that's less than 3 cubic feet in volume.

It's like a shallow, fast river vrs a deep, slow river, the same amount of water moving, you just can see the movement better with one over the other. But the results are pretty much the same.

 

[_raehln_]

Air is air. It doesn't disappear. If a fan is putting out 50cfm, it won't matter if it's going through a rad or not, you still get 50cfm. Where rads affect airflow is in distance. A fan that's not blocked by any obstruction stands a good chance of putting a decent amount of air directly to the back of the case. Through a rad at intake, that rarely ever happens if the fans are in push. If the fans are in pull, there's no difference with or without the rad. However, if there's decent exhaust, it'll create a low pressure area in front of the fans, so any air inside the case will flow in that direction anyways, taking gpu heat with it. So while you may not get a breeze you can feel, there's still air going over to the back, pushed by incoming air from the rad. Doesn't take very long at all for 50 cubic feet of air to exchange in a case that's less than 3 cubic feet in volume.

It's like a shallow, fast river vrs a deep, slow river, the same amount of water moving, you just can see the movement better with one over the other. But the results are pretty much the same.

Thanks for the great explanation. That makes a lot of sense.
Though, wouldn't it be good for the intake fans on the front to be able to push/pull cool air into the case and all the way to the back of the case?
in other words, if the radiator is on the front would it prevent the airflow from reaching the back of the case?

I guess something I can always do is to set up my airflow set-up one way. Then test it running a stress test.
Adjust the fans/radiators to another position and test again.
ensuring that adequate time is allotted to let the computer return to room temperature.
& ensuring room temperature is consistent.