*** Major Dilemma *** GTX 980 Reference or Non-Reference.

[luckystrikes]

Hello Community,
I would truly appreciate your deep insight and advice for what I am going through.

I am on a verge of getting GTX 980 Graphic Card.

I've took long time to research on my own and strangely all the answers I've read would not let me make a certain decision.

Thus, I am posting my question here, the Great "Tom's Hardware"

My Question.

Should I get Reference GTX 980 card or any "branded" GTX 980 card ?

I have decent air flow case and I am not looking to put liquid cooling.

Most say it doesn't really matter for 980 cards whether it's reference or non-reference.

My case has 4 x front intake fans, 1 x bottom intake, 2 x side intake , 2 x top exhaust and 1 x rear exhaust. (intakes are all 120mm and all exhausts are 140mm)
*I believe exhaust > intake would be ideal for the air flow.*

I am more focused on their Temperature than Speed.

How much difference in temp. do they have between reference vs non-reference(MSI, Gigabyte)?

Anyone who are familiar, any knowledge or experienced with these, please do let me know.

Prices are not my concern right now...

(I want to get reference card GTX 980 because of its look. But do not want to regret it after if it will give me some temperature that I wasn't expecting.)

Any reply or advice would be much appreciated.

 

[misfitkid86]

well reference is a bit better for case temps but will be hotter and may be louder as the single fan has to work much harder. after market will be much cooler and often a lot quieter as well as being factory overclocked and looking nice. i'm of the opinion that unless you have a tiny case with horrible airflow you should go 3rd party, i think you get a bit nicer of a card and if you go really premium you can get binned cards that are designed for playing around and overclocking. if you may ever water cool evga allows removal of their cooler without voiding the warranty which is so so nice. so yeah, i'd recommend non reference.

 

[holyrage]

get the non reference MSI Gaming card it is the quietest card around

IMHO i prefer Intake> exhaust aka posative pressure

as long as u have the intakes filtered than u wont get dust inside the case which is nice and it is only 3-2C hotter than negative pressure inside the case

 

[luckystrikes]

well reference is a bit better for case temps but will be hotter and may be louder as the single fan has to work much harder. after market will be much cooler and often a lot quieter as well as being factory overclocked and looking nice. i'm of the opinion that unless you have a tiny case with horrible airflow you should go 3rd party, i think you get a bit nicer of a card and if you go really premium you can get binned cards that are designed for playing around and overclocking. if you may ever water cool evga allows removal of their cooler without voiding the warranty which is so so nice. so yeah, i'd recommend non reference.

Thanks for the advice.
okay.. let's say the reference card will stay around 80'C under load.
Should I be worried? would it damage anything?
If it throttles, wouldn't I get stuttering effect in game when that happens? or lower fps?

 

[sz0ty0l4]

i woudln't buy the reference, there are cheap 3d party cards which has much better cooling ang bigger headroom for overclocking, with the same or even better performance.
i have the gtx 980 oc wf3 from gigabyte, it was pretty cheap and it never reaches 70C on stock. i can overclock to 1500/7800-8000 and the card is still stable and around 75-78C with the wf3 cooling.

 

[holyrage]

^ msi cards are way different than their crappy motherboards in fact their Fans are a bit quiter than the asus fans and also runs 2C cooler

only problem is no backplate for the VRM on the back other than that the card is good Overall

 

[misfitkid86]

well reference is a bit better for case temps but will be hotter and may be louder as the single fan has to work much harder. after market will be much cooler and often a lot quieter as well as being factory overclocked and looking nice. i'm of the opinion that unless you have a tiny case with horrible airflow you should go 3rd party, i think you get a bit nicer of a card and if you go really premium you can get binned cards that are designed for playing around and overclocking. if you may ever water cool evga allows removal of their cooler without voiding the warranty which is so so nice. so yeah, i'd recommend non reference.

Thanks for the advice.
okay.. let's say the reference card will stay around 80'C under load.
Should I be worried? would it damage anything?
If it throttles, wouldn't I get stuttering effect in game when that happens? or lower fps?

no it wouldn't be really bad for the card, it's just going to be a matter of noise and overclocking headroom. as others have said if you grab an after market card you won't see over 70-75 even overclocked and under full load, with the ref card you'll only be able to oc a little bit and it will be hotter, that said the 980 is a fairly efficient card that runs colder than most so you may not notice huge differences. that said i still will push for a card from msi, or evga.