EVGA could lose out on quite a bit of money due to trying to cut costs in putting together GTX 970/980 cards

[mcmad358]

no they dont, its not like the card is throttling or anything. the cooler works fine, people are just inventing problems where there are none... -.-

if i am going to drop 500-600 dollars on a card, I want it to be perfect or close to it. This is a slight mistake which could be Easily fixed

[heathd]

rajiintek for you then anyway, i just want them to go more subtle... all these coolers are starting to cater to 12 y/o. the only thing they lack for that are leds... Currently, for me its either Gainwards Phantom line, or EVGA ACX, or reference blower. everything else is so flashy

I agree 100%. Its the whole reason I went with evga cards. Clean and simple.

[heathd]

if i am going to drop 500-600 dollars on a card, I want it to be perfect or close to it. This is a slight mistake which could be Easily fixed

Not really an easy fix. The handful of hours it would take to shift the heat pipe and plate orientation would be easy in cad, but that design change would cause their supplier to re-tool and change their nc programming. That last bit is expensive and their are always scrap and iterations to the design process to fix stupid crap like fit and finish.

[79wjd]

if i am going to drop 500-600 dollars on a card, I want it to be perfect or close to it. This is a slight mistake which could be Easily fixed

Yeah, by removing the heat pipe, which wouldn't change its performance just cost more money since it would require more R&D as well as retooling of the manufacturing process. Glad to know you'd be happy to pay more for absolutely no performance increase. 

[Victorious Secret]

I'm seriously tempted to crack open my 660 and see if that too has the same "design flaw" 

[TechFan@ic]

Wasn't it the 280 and 280x.

Or are they both botched.

Because I'm pretty sure the 280x at least had a 770(edit: apparently the 780) cooler slapped on it.

The 280X & 280 cards have the GPU die in a diagonal position.

On the 290X and 290 however the GPU die is mounted longitudinally and comes in contact with only three out of the five heatpipes.

 

[TheProfosist]

This looks just like what Asus did with the DCUII Hawaii cards.

Honestly, the new GM204 chips don't seem to need such huge coolers on them anyway. I was surprised not to see any short/mITX 970's on release because they had them right away with the 285 and the 970 is even lower TDP.

I doubt it will become a huge issue for these cards, but it would most certainly steer me away from ACX if I was in the market for a 970.

Dude itx 970 is a great idea! If ones comes out ill probably get one to replace the 760 in ChibiPC.

[aduman]

It's ok if it does not affect the temps. DCII on 290s were a disaster... This does not justify EVGA's move but it's ok in my book.

[MonkeyFace]

I hope there will be reference cooler GTX 970 available in the future. Otherwise I think I'm going with Asus Strix in my itx build.  

[Guest Kloaked]

Not gonna lie, I'd like to slap my NF-F12s onto my GPU and see just how silent and cool that baby would be. 

 

Didn't someone on LTT do this and made a review on it?

 

EDIT: Found it. It was that guy with 9000000000 Noctua fans on external rads.

 

This is the rig he put P12's on the GPU

 

[KeltonDSMer]

Dude itx 970 is a great idea! If ones comes out ill probably get one to replace the 760 in ChibiPC.

 

I'm sure they will come in time, it is such a perfect use case for GM204. I'd love to see a single 8pin instead of 2x6pins as well, it seems unnecessary to require two plugs when a single 8 pin is rated for the same wattage as far as PCIe spec is concerned. It wouldn't matter for a regular sized video card, but I would appreciate a single plug in a SFF environment (especially if using a modular PSU, although I guess "daisy-chained" PSU cables are fairly common).

 

SovietOnion did point me towards a Zotac card on Newegg that looks pretty small, but there were no dimension specs or any mention of mITX/SFF in the description. I'm not sure if there are any out yet, but I can't imagine they will be coming out too far down the line if they haven't been released already.

[That Norwegian Guy]

Oh wow, so this is why the ACX is the only aftermarket card that's actually cheaper than the reference card here in Norway...

[mcmad358]

Yeah, by removing the heat pipe, which wouldn't change its performance just cost more money since it would require more R&D as well as retooling of the manufacturing process. Glad to know you'd be happy to pay more for absolutely no performance increase.

I'm just saying, if I am going to pay for a high quality and expensive piece of hardware I want the best thing. I expect more of evga. This small mixup turns me off despite it having little to effect and just urks me.

[mcmad358]

Not really an easy fix. The handful of hours it would take to shift the heat pipe and plate orientation would be easy in cad, but that design change would cause their supplier to re-tool and change their nc programming. That last bit is expensive and their are always scrap and iterations to the design process to fix stupid crap like fit and finish.

This should NOT be a problem in the first place... Evga makes amazing products and to know that they aren't making as high of quality products ad they could have makes me upset.

[79wjd]

I'm just saying, if I am going to pay for a high quality and expensive piece of hardware I want the best thing. I expect more of evga. This small mixup turns me off despite it having little to effect and just urks me.

But again, EVGA engineers new they would've just excluded that last heatpipe anyway, so including it has no negative impact. If the temps were more than a degree or two more than alternatives, then sure, I could see this being an issue....but seeing as the temps are in-line with the competition, then it's safe to assume that EVGA probably thought about it and came to the conclusion it just doesn't matter...and therefore they should take the shortcut and save everyone some money. 

[TheProfosist]

Didn't someone on LTT do this and made a review on it?

Possibly it would take up a ton of room and be complete overkill though.

[Yoinkerman]

This

could people on this forum quit being so sensationalist with... everything?

sigh

[ComradeHX]

This is hilarious. People see something they think is a design flaw and suddenly everyone turns into GPU design engineers and thermodynamics experts.  <_<

 

The only reason there was an issue with the Asus DCUII cooler on the R9 series cards was because those were very hot running chips and actually needed better contact with the cooler to properly dissipate the heat. These Maxwell chips (970/980) are much cooler running chips and if you'd take the time to actually look at the temps, you'd see the ACX cooler works just fine with plenty of overclocking headroom. 

I thought the problem with those DCUII cooler on R9s were the fact that VRAM modules are not in contact with the cooler at all?

[heathd]

This should NOT be a problem in the first place... Evga makes amazing products and to know that they aren't making as high of quality products ad they could have makes me upset.

So despite it still working as intended, you're upset because you didn't get your way?

[TheProfosist]

So despite it still working as intended, you're upset because you didn't get your way?

hes basically saying they shouldnt cut corner even though it doesnt really matter all that much in this case.

[mcmad358]

So despite it still working as intended, you're upset because you didn't get your way?

I'm upset because it is a mistake which could have been avoided

[heathd]

hes basically saying they shouldnt cut corner even though it doesnt really matter all that much in this case.

I know. That was my attempt at being an ass.

I don't see it as cutting corners when it works just fine.

[zanduh]

Corners were cut, doesn't seem to be a big deal at all. Why does this have 5 pages of comments?

[AHaskin14]

If it was slightly offset it wouldnt be a big deal, but its pretty much making no contact with the one heatpipe. big fail.

[mcmad358]

hes basically saying they shouldnt cut corner even though it doesnt really matter all that much in this case.

yup