NZXT Kraken G10 + GTX 780 Lightning Mini-Review

[Face2Face]

 

I posted this review on the Anandtech forums, just wanted to give the LTT crew some love.

 

So I pre-ordered the NZXT G10 Kraken bracket back in beginning of December. After weeks of waiting I finally got it delivered last week as part of the 2nd batch, so I am now very happy. Now for the GTX 780 Lightning. Overall I have been very pleased with the Lighting minus the crap Elpida memory. Ascetically is looks a little riced out in my opinion, with all of the blue LED lights on the back of the PCB and the color changing logo from green to blue to pink.... I mean't red.. The performance was pretty good from the stock cooler. I do however use the aftermarket Skyn3t bios on my card and run my card at 1320Mhz on the core and 1656Mhz on the memory when gaming. In order for me to get decent temps (below 80c) I have to keep the fan speed at 75% or more. At that fan speed the card is just a little to loud for my liking. This is the main reason why I decided to purchase the NZXT G10 bracket. 

 

Installing the bracket was fairly easy, but the screws that are used to mount the All-in-one cooler were too short, so I didn't use the rubber spacers for the back retention bracket.

 

These little guys 

 

 

Evidently NZXT is aware of the issue and will be shipping longer screws in the their 4th batch of pre-orders. People using reference cards shouldn't have too many issues, but there have been a few people with reference R9 290's that had issues with the screws being too short. I think mine were too short because I wanted to keep the back plate installed on my card. Looks too naked without it.

 

As you can see the back G10 retention plate doesn't touch the Lightning backplate, but it's very close. Also note, I had to remove the reactor on the back of the Lighting in order to install the G10. I don't plan on going LN2, so there really isn't a need for it. Here is what it looks like installed.

 

 

 

 

 

Now my Corsair 500R is not meant to house multiple 240mm radiators. So I  modded, which is a cool way of saying "Cut" a section of my 5.25" bays in order to mount the Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme in the front of my case. Turns out that this all-in-one and most other Asetek made all-in-one's only have 12" coolant hoses.... Doh... I was about an inch and half off overall... The exception is the NZXT X40 and X60, they have 14" hoses so mounting the radiator in front of your mid or full tower case is a much easier task.. Go figure. I had no choice but to mount the radiator in the bottom of my case. The left 120mm fan is pulling cool air from the outside of the case, and the right 120mm fan is pulling some of the cool air provided by the lower front case fan. This setup is not optimal, and i'm sure I can shave off a couple degrees with a better configuration.... 

 

 

 

 

Test setup

 

 

 

The temperatures were taken using Unigine Heaven 4.0 with max settings at 1440p. I ran the benchmark for 20 minutes for each result. I then allowed 20 minutes for cool down as well. Room ambient temperature was 21c.

 

Here are results. They are broken down by cooling method, core and memory clock speeds, core voltage, fan speed or profile, core, vrm, memory and PCB temperatures. The GTX 780 Lightning is one of the only GTX 780's that allows for software monitoring for everything besides the core temperatures. 

 

Now enough rambling. Off to the results!!

 

 

Now I can enjoy the quietness of gaming at 1320/1650 with the Thermaltake water 2.0 set to quiet mode using the included software. The extreme fan setting, which is basically the radiator fans maxed out to 100%, produce about the same noise as the Lightning cooler @ 75-80% fan speed if anyone was interested.

 

 

Made a quick video showing the setup 

 

[WoodenMarker]

This belongs in the Member Reviews section. I'll move the thread.

[OmanGS]

Really nice gap in temperature for the core. Any idea if the VRM, Mem, and PCB increase will cause issue in the future?

[Face2Face]

Really nice gap in temperature for the core. Any idea if the VRM, Mem, and PCB increase will cause issue in the future?

Nope, the temps are well within spec.

[Face2Face]

I was even able to push my card to 1502Mhz on the core with this cooler

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT:  

 

Just got a little more out of here. Pretty much reached the limits of this cooling combo.

 

[Freaky_spider]

thats one nice OC'er you got there, wish i could say the same :'( , enjoy that POWER!

 

nice review to ofcourse.

[Mitrailleuse]

Thats amazing,

i'm looking forward too getting a kraken g10 for myself.

but i think a 120mm radiator is more than enough...

[Face2Face]

Thats amazing,

i'm looking forward too getting a kraken g10 for myself.

but i think a 120mm radiator is more than enough...

Yup, a 120mm radiator would be fine. I was looking for a cheap H55, but ran across this one slightly used for $60.

[Mitrailleuse]

Yup, a 120mm radiator would be fine. I was looking for a cheap H55, but ran across this one slightly used for $60.

Actually i am planning to get the H55 too,

but i'm waiting for the G10 to hit retail stores,which could take sometime...

[nukem]

nice overclock man! looks good.

 

on a side note, im also wanting to get a g10 for my asus dcu2 780, where abouts do i find information about whether or not the g10 will mount my card? last time i checked the nzxt website only shows compatibilty with different aio coolers and not the compatible reference/after market gpu's.

[Face2Face]

nice overclock man! looks good.

 

on a side note, im also wanting to get a g10 for my asus dcu2 780, where abouts do i find information about whether or not the g10 will mount my card? last time i checked the nzxt website only shows compatibilty with different aio coolers and not the compatible reference/after market gpu's.

 

I could tell you, but I would need to see what your card looked like with the cooler removed. The NZXT website, states only reference cards, but it will work on most custom cards as well.

[xToFxREAPER]

Lookin pretty good. personally wouldnt wanna mutilate my 780 lightning for this ill wait till i get my custom loop for these insane oc's are you using skyn3ts bios from ocn?

[Face2Face]

Lookin pretty good. personally wouldnt wanna mutilate my 780 lightning for this ill wait till i get my custom loop for these insane oc's are you using skyn3ts bios from ocn?

Yes, the Skyn3t bios and the RBBY tool. If I was running a reference card I would be worried, but with the Lightning power delivery system I am not too concerned. This is just for fun to see how hard I can push the card. By no means stable for gaming-- 1450Mhz I would think be possible for gaming though with a full  waterblock.

[xToFxREAPER]

Yes, the Skyn3t bios and the RBBY tool. If I was running a reference card I would be worried, but with the Lightning power delivery system I am not too concerned. This is just for fun to see how hard I can push the card. By no means stable for gaming-- 1450Mhz I would think be possible for gaming though with a full  waterblock.

ive acheived 1411mhz and 7.2ghz mem stable with the air cooler sitting around 84 degrees with the stock ln2 bios, im gonna flash the skyn3t bios once i have my second card and custom loop i think they will hit some insane numbers

[Face2Face]

ive acheived 1411mhz and 7.2ghz mem stable with the air cooler sitting around 84 degrees with the stock ln2 bios, im gonna flash the skyn3t bios once i have my second card and custom loop i think they will hit some insane numbers

Very nice! I look forward to seeing what you can do. I have seen 1600Mhz+ on a GTX 780 Lightning, but that was with LN2. I am confident my card can do 1550Mhz, as it cleared 10 of the 18 valley runs before valley stopped responding. Temps were creeping up though, so I was a little uneasy and my PSU was crying out in pain

[xToFxREAPER]

Very nice! I look forward to seeing what you can do. I have seen 1600Mhz+ on a GTX 780 Lightning, but that was with LN2. I am confident my card can do 1550Mhz, as it cleared 10 of the 18 valley runs before valley stopped responding. Temps were creeping up though, so I was a little uneasy and my PSU was crying out in pain

yeah ill be replacing my corsair rm850 watt when i do that upgrade im excited for it though, got a black and gold themed rig going which is part of why i chose the lightning to start although i mostly built around the lightning planning mayhems pastel yellow coolant. ill have to service the loop a bit more but damn will it ever look nice. i have a build log up just need to update it with the new gpu since i killed a 770 a week ago

[Coldwar]

Really awesome clocks there, i will be getting the g10 in less than a month + a new case because mine is too small to host 2x g10's with kraken x40..

Anyway i were wondering about how you still can be able to run afterburner 3.0.0 B15? When it expired December 14 2013?

[Face2Face]

Really awesome clocks there, i will be getting the g10 in less than a month + a new case because mine is too small to host 2x g10's with kraken x40..

Anyway i were wondering about how you still can be able to run afterburner 3.0.0 B15? When it expired December 14 2013?

Thanks bud. I use the RBBY tool with the version of Beta 15 included. It allows me to use the RBBY tool with beta 15 without it expiring.

[Coldwar]

Thanks bud. I use the RBBY tool with the version of Beta 15 included. It allows me to use the RBBY tool with beta 15 without it expiring.

Thanks mate, do you know the real difference between Beta 15 And 18?

[Face2Face]

Thanks mate, do you know the real difference between Beta 15 And 18?

You will be able to use the OSD in native 64bit games like BF4, but here is the rest of the differences.

 

This update features a number of AMD improvements and RTSS now includes exclusive 64-bit OSD, RAM buffer, improved H264, DX11.2 OSD and APEX support . Regular Afterburner and SE are now merged, more efficient low driver level access for AMD Bonaire, Curacao and Hawaii GPUs, Overdrive 6 access to support future AMD GPUs, three selectable voltage control modes added.

[Coldwar]

+ Do you have both bios flashed with Skyn3t or just the Stock one?

[Face2Face]

+ Do you have both bios flashed with Skyn3t or just the Stock one?

I just have the LN2 bios flashed with the Skyn3t bios. The first bios is still the stock MSI bios.

 

Where did you get that bios at?

http://www.overclock.net/t/1422953/official-msi-gtx-780-lightning-owners-club/0_50

[Coldwar]

Good Game... Ez3Flash bricked my second Gpu.. With sky-LN2-vbios-300w-640w-rev4 Bios.. Pff, now i need to go through a mess to find how i can unbrick it.. Ez3Flash seems not to work on my pc correctly.. 

 

 

Im such an idiot

[MrImnotMLG]

*Whistles*

[Coldwar]

Okay, the program is corrupt to use on my pc "Doesn't work" but it didn't brick my Gpu for some reason when i enable LN2 mode on both gpu i can only detect my First Gpu and not the second one. And i have taken out both Graphic card and install the Skyn3t Bios separately and both works fine.

Do you know any reason for that to even happen?