If I plan on Water cooling, is there any point to spending extra on a nicer card?

[anne.gevas]

I'm planning my first water cooled build. I was going to go with a 1070 ti. In my experience the only real difference between variations of a none reference card is the cooling system. If I'm correct, than is there any reason to go for anything other then the cheapest?


I was looking specifically at the EVGA 1070 ti gaming line. There are several cards in the line, but so far as I can tell the only difference is the cooling set up. the difference in price between the cheapest and most expensive is almost enough to pay for the waterblock.

p.s. If you have any general advice/tips about water cooling it wouldn't go unappreciated.

 

[Lutfij]

1| You should read through the watercooling sticky(in my sig) to educate yourself about the world of watercooling.
2| You can also go for reference cards since the aftermarket cooling solution would entail a unique full cover block. You can get a reference card and overclock it as well.
3| Aftermarket cards do come with beefy power deliver and additional cooling but if you're watercooling, and overclocking you should know that all chips are now given a limit as to how far they can overclock.

 

[rubix_1011]

Graphics cards are also built either to reference spec by Nvidia or AMD, or partners take the reference design and can choose to develop an alternate PCB layout. Most full-cover waterblocks for graphics cards are designed for reference PCB. Some will make special blocks for non-reference PCB, but these might only fit VERY specific card models.

This is likely the most important choice would be, if you are looking to include a GPU in a cooling loop. The alternative is to use universal GPU blocks which look similar to CPU blocks in that they simply cover the IHS and die of the GPU itself and would require additional cooling over the vRAM, VRMs and MOSFETs on the card which would otherwise be cooled by the factory cooler.