Is there any difference in GPUs if u watercool?

[Simon Heat]

Assuming u have 2 of the same GPUs (for exaple a 1070)

Both watercooled with full cover blocks

But the first is the MSI Armor one and the second is a "fancier" more expensive  FTW2 GAMING iCX-9.

Are they going to have differences in performance? 
In other words

Why pay more if u are already going to throw away the stock cooler and put a waterblock? What are the differences?

 

Just to clear things out, i am not talking about water vs. air. Its about Cheap 1070 (450-480 USD) vs Expensive 1070 (500+ USD), if both are cooled by a full cover waterblock

Edited July 11, 2017 by Simon Heat
explaining the question

[Mister_Cro_Noob]

1 minute ago, Simon Heat said:

Assuming u have 2 of the same GPUs (for exaple a 1070)

Both watercooled with full cover blocks

But the first is the MSI Armor one and the second is a "fancier" more expensive  FTW2 GAMING iCX-9.

Are they going to have differences in performance? 
In other words

Why pay more if u are already going to throw away the stock cooler and put a waterblock? What are the differences?

When you have water cooling you can overclock the gpu and gain a small performance boost.

[Bananasplit_00]

if you are watercooling the VRM matters a bit more seeing as you can push more voltage and reach higher clock speeds with your GPU but if you dont plan on overclocking(then why watercool at all...) then it dosent matter much and the MSI Armor 1080 is a pretty good candidate to do just this on seeing as it has the same VRM as the more expensive Gameing X card lol

[AnonymousGuy]

If going water, only card worth buying is Reference / Founders Edition.  OC-ability is the same nowadays for all NV boards and the main differentiator is cooler design, which you'd be throwing away anyways.

[Enderman]

Just now, Mister_Cro_Noob said:

When you have water cooling you can overclock the gpu and gain a small performance boost.

He's talking about different cards watercooled, not air cooled vs watercooled.

 

And no, there is pretty much no difference because with 1000 series cards they're all limited by the silicon lottery, not how many power phases the PCB has.

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, Mister_Cro_Noob said:

When you have water cooling you can overclock the gpu and gain a small performance boost.

you can overclock either way, you dont need watercooling to overclock. anyway what i think you are getting at is that you can potentially reach higher clocks because heat isnt an issue anymore

[For Science!]

I think by-far the biggest difference will be if the chips have been binned, then overclocking may be easier. Secondly powerdelivery may be better in the higher end cards.

 

But as others have said, it makes only a small difference if any,

[Max_Settings]

Only reason to get higher end card to watercool is to get upgrade power phases and more power headroom for overclocking. However do note that when overclocking a SLI config, the setup is stuck at the stable speed of the weaker GPU. So lets say that you tried overclocking both 1070s outside of SLI and one was  stable at 2000mhz and the other was only stable at 1900mhz, when you SLI them the config will only be stable at 1900mhz.

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, Mister_Cro_Noob said:

When you have water cooling you can overclock the gpu and gain a small performance boost.

Watercooling isn't necessary for overclocking, but it'll result in better cooling allowing you to use higher voltages before the card overheats and throttles.

[Cyracus]

I've heard a few reputable reviewers recently say they haven't been bothering with graphics card reviews because they're all cap out in a fairly tight range, basically any 1070 you get will perform about on par with any other, the main difference is how much noise it makes and how well the cooler performs