GTX 1070 Asus ROG Strix vs EVGA SC Gaming

[Luis Felipe Rodrigues]

Hello guys, I'm gonna buy a GTX 1070 and my first two options were the MSI Gaming X and the Asus ROG Strix, but none of them were available in my country, so I was ready to buy the EVGA SC Gaming instead, and today is the purchase day, so I decided to do a quick re-check of the available models just in case, and it turns out the Asus ROG Strix is now available again! The only problem is that it's $50 more expensive than the EVGA one, is it worth the extra money? I give high priority to low temps and quietness, so if the Strix is cooler and quieter, I think it's worth the extra money, but I don't know if that's the case, can anyone let me know? I know the Strix probably performs a bit better than the EVGA, but that's not a high priority for me, temps and noise are more important.

 

[RobCrezz]

Go for the Evga SC gaming and save the $50. The SC Gaming ACX 3.0 version is good.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The EVGA SC series has historically almost always been a reference board with a decent cooler. We have consistently avoided the SC series since the 5XX series as any AIB card with a reference PCB is simply not in the same class as offerings like the Strix, Windforce and Gaming X. This was brought home hard with the 570 when gamers were brought to a halt w/ fried VRMs ... we saw it again with the now infamous VRM fires which plagued the 1060 thru 1080 SC series, resulting in the performance cutting BIOS, recall and thermal pad offer to use to address the overheating issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAbl0fLY06U

While the later versions of the card do have the thermal pad kit installed, it is still the same old tired reference PCB. If you want to see a good tear down comparison of the SC versus Strix versus Gaming X, read pages 2 thru 4 here

http://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review/2/

You'll note the same lack of thermal pads on the EVGA 970 as caused the fires on the 1060-1080. Also 1 of the 3 heat pipes totally missed the GPU and EVGAs initial response was that this was "intentional".

Long before you get to the performance testing, by reading about the differences in PCB componentry, (power delivery, VRM, chokes, etc) you can see that MSI went all out ... Asus made almost as many improvements and the SC nada. As can be expected, that's the order in which thy finished in 970 performance testing.

Now normally we wouldn't see that much of a difference in cost. The cards usually go for about the same amount. If you are going to run the card at stock speeds, I wouldn't worry too much (assuming that its the "fixed" version of the card w/ thermal pads) , but if you are the type who uses MSI Afterburner to boost the speed, I'd spring for the $50. If it comes to a point where ya selling the card, you'll have to expect less money as potential buyers will be concerned about the tainted image of the 10xx series SC cards due to all the hoopla w/ the fires.