Worked asked if I wanted my to trade my air-cooled RTX3080Ti for their brand new AIO water-cooled RTX3080TI

[xentric]

Long time no post. Was looking for advise.

I was lucky enough to get a MSI RTX 3080 TI Gaming X Trio from a Best Buy drop over the summer:https://us.msi.com/Graphics-Card/GeForce-RTX-3080-Ti-GAMING-X-TRIO-12G/Overview

But, my work obtained a Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080 TI Xtreme Waterforce that has an AIO water-cooler: https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N308TAORUSX-W-12GD#kf
Due to my works use case for GPUs on test benches. Having an AIO water-cooled rad makes the card difficult to work with.

They asked me if I was interested in trading my "old" RTX 3080 TI air-cool card for this brand new AIO water-cooled card.

I'm on the fence about it. My current plan is to run some benchmark between the cards and see. I have one of the new Corsair 5000D cases so I'm not worried about fitting the rad.
Thinking about mount the rad in a pull configuration on the back panel rad mounting location.

My concerns are:

• The Gigabyte card feels really cheap
• The Gigabyte card came with no mount hardware. No extra screws for mounting the rad and a very poor manual that doesn't even talk about mount the rad at all. Even their website downloadable manual has no information on mounting the rad which I find super odd. (I have extra mounting hardware from other AIOs I bought in the past luckily) 
• The MSI card requires 3 8 pin power and the Gigabyte is only 2 8 pin power. That seems odd.
• The Gigabyte card is completely shielding by this cheap feeling plastic shroud which appears to have 0 cooling for the power delivery on the card.
• The Gigabyte card has wires coming from the GPU to proprietary connectors to the rad fans.
  • Positive: The GPU controls the fan speed of the included fans
  • Negative: I can't mount the extra NF-12 I have without finding more fan headers and figuring out the fan controller settings to do GPU temps.
• The tubes on the Gigabyte card are sleeved but you can feel the tubing underneath is that old ripped type from early AIOs. I remember reading some negative things about those types of tubs?
• Read horrible things about the Gigabyte RMA process if something happens but I know I can use the vendor it was purchased from and American Express if need be through the company.

 

Any thoughts, ideas, or advise would be much appreciated. 

[tiggar47]

I consider Gigabyte a budget brand, they have Aourus brand that has some premium quality products.

 

Best bet is to run all the benchmarks, Idle temperatures for the GPU and ambient case temp at idle. Do the same at max load. Compare the clock speeds etc.

 

Monitor which card has better clock speeds when under load, if they fluctuate or not. You can also try your luck OC-ing and see how they behave.

 

Lastly run benchmarks like Unigine and 3dMark 3 times each to remove the margin for error.

 

GL hope it helps.