Opinions to change to water cooling set-up

duratothemax · February 17, 2015

Hello everyone,

I am interested in some opinions on whether or not to invest in a water cooling set-up...

I have read a good bit of the sticky as well as watched many of Linus's videos.

So i just bought my third gtx 780ti(gigabyte GHZ edition) on top of my other two (another GHZ editon and an MSI twin frozr)

So 3-way sli with these style cooler is an obvious no-go.... Thought i could figure out a way, but still not good.

I used nvflash to make the msi card think it is a GHZ card so they will sli without issues.

Here is my question: Being that these cards are a generation old, do you think it would be benificial to get all the water cooling goodies? I Have a good case for water or air (Cosmos II Ultra), asus p9x79ws board, and i just bought a 4930k on ebay to replace my 3930k. This computer thing is becoming an addiction...

Already did a lot of reasearching and 3-way sli is really only benifcial for resolutions over 1080p, and im my case i am doing Surround with three of the Asus 144hz monitors. Also i figure just the water blocks should run me at least $500 if not more.

Should I go the water cooling route or maybe consider selling the MSI card and "dealing" with 2-way sli?

EDIT: I bought the first two cards when the 980 came out, so i paid less than $500, and i got the third one used on Craigslist.... just food for though, this is why I don't want to re-sell the MSI card.

-Josh

brandishwar · February 17, 2015

The third card isn't really going to provide a lot of performance gain over having only two, but since you have it, might as well make do with what you've got. On the plus side you should have a bit of variety available for selecting blocks, but for the three, unless you also get backplates, you should top out at maybe $450, depending on brand and, again, if you buy backplates with them.

As for whether to do it, that's entirely up to you. In your instance with three cards to keep cool, plus your CPU, it might be worth it, but only you can ultimately make that call. If you're really gung-ho about it, you're probably not going to sleep well at night unless you actually pursue it, so I'd say to go for it. Just look around for other builds in your case to get some ideas, if you haven't been already.

duratothemax · March 1, 2015

The third card isn't really going to provide a lot of performance gain over having only two, but since you have it, might as well make do with what you've got. On the plus side you should have a bit of variety available for selecting blocks, but for the three, unless you also get backplates, you should top out at maybe $450, depending on brand and, again, if you buy backplates with them.

As for whether to do it, that's entirely up to you. In your instance with three cards to keep cool, plus your CPU, it might be worth it, but only you can ultimately make that call. If you're really gung-ho about it, you're probably not going to sleep well at night unless you actually pursue it, so I'd say to go for it. Just look around for other builds in your case to get some ideas, if you haven't been already.

For single 1080 displays, yes a third card is not beneficial. But i was able to do a test with a pcie riser ribbon cable to get that third card away from the other two. In 5760, I was able to get 30% more fps in crysis 3. And unigine valley scores went up a good bit also.

So let's say I do invest in the water cooling stuff... How long will I be able to maintain top tier performance?

brandishwar · March 2, 2015

For 3x780Ti in SLI, you might be able to have top settings performance ("Ultra settings") for a couple more years. I think 2x680s in SLI can still maintain top settings performance on games released in 2014, so you're still going to be good for a while. Water cooling will allow you consider overclocking your cards as well, but that's not necessarily going to buy you a lot more time for gaming, depending on how much of a boost you're able to get out of it.