GTX 1080 - 1070. Worth custom card to Watercool? VS F/E Card

Purplehazeffc · August 3, 2016

Hi Guys.

As the title states. Would it make any difference to get an custom card over an F/E card if you are going to be putting a waterblock on it???

The reason I ask is..

With the now older generations of cards, when you brought a custom card you also got better power delivery. IE: using more PCI-E power connectors, better VRM, more power phases to help with overclocking.

This is for just plain outright overclocking performance, to squeeze everything out for benching like Firestrike or Valley/Heaven scores.

Coming from owning a GTX 970. It was found that the Gigabyte G1 was the better overclocker. With both EVGA & MSI just slightly behind. The ASUS Strix with its poor power delivery couldn't cope.

Going by current reviews of both the GTX 1080 & GTX 1070, The F/E based cards are boosting & overclocking more or to the same levels as the manufacture custom cards.
Even though the custom cards have the better power delivery systems implemented. And better cooling solutions as well. But with a waterblock installed, Thermal limits will be irrelevant..

It would be interesting to see a F/E based card like a GTX 1070 with the 6 pin power. Vs a custom card with 8 pin power or even 2 x 6 pin power.
Put a waterblock on them both & see how much, if any difference in max stable overclock there is...

People's thoughts ????

Dresta · August 3, 2016

A GTX 1070 with a 6-pin connector would overclock less since well its a power hungry card that can't OC on a 6-pin connector,but it would run cooler and more quite,the non wc cards would be able to overclock more,but would be louder and hotter

Leonard · August 3, 2016

Firstly, the 1070 doesn't have a 6pin power connector, it has an 8pin as the standard and after market cards have as high as 2x 8pin like the FTW from EVGA. All of the 1070s and 1080s go to like 1900mhz to 2100mhz and the power connector has nothing to do with the OC.

If i were you and you are looking to watercool your GPU i would get the cheapest GPU that has a waterblock support. If the FE cards are cheapest by you, then get that, if say Gigavyte G1 gaming is cheapest, then get that. Currently, on Newegg, the G1 gaming is $429 which is cheaper than any FE and EKWB makes a full cover water block for it.

Note that putting your 1070 on water probably won't get you a higher OC but the GPU will be way way cooler.

Dresta · August 3, 2016

18 minutes ago, Leonard said:

Firstly, the 1070 doesn't have a 6pin power connector, it has an 8pin as the standard and after market cards have as high as 2x 8pin like the FTW from EVGA. All of the 1070s and 1080s go to like 1900mhz to 2100mhz and the power connector has nothing to do with the OC.

If i were you and you are looking to watercool your GPU i would get the cheapest GPU that has a waterblock support. If the FE cards are cheapest by you, then get that, if say Gigavyte G1 gaming is cheapest, then get that. Currently, on Newegg, the G1 gaming is $429 which is cheaper than any FE and EKWB makes a full cover water block for it.

Note that putting your 1070 on water probably won't get you a higher OC but the GPU will be way way cooler.

1.This is not a thread for help this is a thread for information

2.He said it would be interesting to see if a GTX 1070 had a 6-pin connector,not that it has a 6-pin connector

3.Power connectors have everything to do with the OC,the more connectors the better since the more the card can draw power to support the higher OC,until the card gets A) Loud B) Hot , ask yourself why do they make cards with 3x8 pin connectors if by your logic they can OC the same with a single 6-pin connector

mrchow19910319 · August 3, 2016

34 minutes ago, Dresta said:

snip

A lot of the youtubers had said that the extra power delivery will NOT help you to get a higher clock speed.

I have only seen 1 youtuber said it , which is jaz2cents. I watched one of his youtube video (I think it was the MSI 1080 gaming X one).

He compared his FE card to the after market MSI card. Which showed that those 2 cards basically have the same overclock potential.

I have no idea whether what he is saying is truth though.

The previous gen card (Maxwell and such) it was true that more power delivery will guarantee you more OC headroom.

However in Pascal it seems not to be that way, probably because Pascal cards are shitty when it comes to OC.

You just cannot squeeze more juice out of it.

Am I correct when it comes to all these?

Correct me if I am wrong. Not quite into this "OC game" though.

Lays · August 3, 2016

56 minutes ago, Dresta said:

1.This is not a thread for help this is a thread for information

2.He said it would be interesting to see if a GTX 1070 had a 6-pin connector,not that it has a 6-pin connector

3.Power connectors have everything to do with the OC,the more connectors the better since the more the card can draw power to support the higher OC,until the card gets A) Loud B) Hot , ask yourself why do they make cards with 3x8 pin connectors if by your logic they can OC the same with a single 6-pin connector

The problem is the architecture itself, not the number of connectors or number of phases. ALL of the 1080 and 1070 are going to do ~2100 give or take some mhz, because of the way the architecture is. Power really isn't a limitation, it's temperature. Giving them shit tons of power availability and voltage isn't going to help, because of how hot the internals of the GPU get, and how extremely sensitive to voltage the chip is. Without subzero cooling or other methods of cooling that can get the GPU extremely cold, we just aren't going to see some random 3x 8 pin 22 phase card magically do 2400 mhz on water.

You have to remember that this chip has ~21% less surface area than the previous 980 ti / Titan X with roughly the same amount of transistors in it, it's extremely hard to dissipate all that heat effectively from inside the internals of the GPU.

Here is a lot of in depth detail about Pascal overclocking:

https://xdevs.com/guide/pascal_oc/