FE and OC'd GCard? What's the real gain? 🧐

[Leemundo]

Hi all,

This is well in advance of me actually buying one but I'm considering in purchasing a RTX 2080. (Currently running a GTX 1070).

Running @ 1440p the 1070 often struggles due to me liking everything looking pretty.

My question is, what are the real gains from having an over clocked card compared to say a founders addition? When I ask this its in consideration of thermals not really being an issue and not intending to over clock.

You can easily spend hundreds more on an OC compared to an FE so with funds limited I was interested in what the actually performance difference was.

Just to add my rig which is aging a bit I think is still adequate for current games. Specs as follows :-

Asrock Z77 extreme 4.
3770k @ 4.4ghz,
16gig 2400 ram,
Various SD hard drives.

Thanks in advance,

Lee.

 

[trawetSluaP]

Do you plan on keeping the card on air?

If so then a non FE would be better as they have better cooling solutions IMO.

Regarding the OC, you're looking a 10 extra frames or so over standard boost clock but from my understanding most cards can be manually OC'd to the same level. It's then important to keep them cool to avoid downclocking.

 

[looz]

If you're not concerned about OC just buy the cheapest card which has a serviceable cooler. Specifically, avoid blower fans unless you've got an actual need for them, like no way to exhaust heat from your case or running multi-GPU. Though for the latter you should just watercool.

In regards to factory OC models, the difference is usually less than 5%. Asus ROG lineup is the worst offender nowadays with significantly higher pricing, and performance to not match that at all.

What you get for the extra cash is better VRMs (not a concern when running stock) and high end boards tend to have coil whine less often. But it's still a bit of a gamble.

 

[grec]

Yeah buy a card for what it is rather than what settings it has, while some cards also have slightly better binning often it's best to just make sure the cooling & power delivery matches how far you want to push an overclock, for a modest one using an FE or reference-PCB based card with a beefier cooler(Which I think can sometimes be cheaper than the FE models) is your best option, there's not much value incentive going beyond that. As far as I know pretty much every card has auto-OCing software you can use with it which will give a modest overclock without the headaches of manually OCing, I guess with modern Turbo you could say it already kinda does a little.

 

[Leemundo]

Thanks for replies guys.

I was considering a blower specifically mainly because I have a View 71 case (fully glass) and have my GCard vertical.

I know people strongly go against the idea but with two 140mm intake and the FE being a blower it tends to work pretty well. Rarely go over 70°c.

I have 1 X 140mm exhaust too. Any recommendations on keeping it cooler while vertical would be much appreciated.

Thanks again.

Lee.

 

[trawetSluaP]

Thanks for replies guys.

I was considering a blower specifically mainly because I have a View 71 case (fully glass) and have my GCard vertical.

I know people strongly go against the idea but with two 140mm intake and the FE being a blower it tends to work pretty well. Rarely go over 70°c.

I have 1 X 140mm exhaust too. Any recommendations on keeping it cooler while vertical would be much appreciated.

Thanks again.

Lee.

I'd say 70C is pretty good for a blower. Would be difficult to lower it without watercooling I'd imagine.

 

[grec]

The FE's for the RTX2000 cards aren't blowers, but the AIB blower models are usually cheaper than the FEs I think, if you don't mind the noise then a blowers fine, they can just sound abit like hairdryers if you push them (Not a problem with closed headphones though), though if you had room for more exhaust fans near the GPU or if the CPU could have an exhaust directly above it too then fitting a non-blower should be fine, as long as your CPU isn't already quite warm anyway, as it might impact the temps on that a little depending on the exhaust setup maybe more than a little.

 

[Warchild]

Thanks for replies guys.

I was considering a blower specifically mainly because I have a View 71 case (fully glass) and have my GCard vertical.

I know people strongly go against the idea but with two 140mm intake and the FE being a blower it tends to work pretty well. Rarely go over 70°c.

I have 1 X 140mm exhaust too. Any recommendations on keeping it cooler while vertical would be much appreciated.

Thanks again.

Lee.

FE cards are no longer blowers in the RTX series. However the ASUS Turbo variant has an AIB Blower cooler, and seems to perform well. Sadly its quite overpriced for what it is.

And for non Watercooling setups, Blowers are the best for SLI/NVlink if that is a plan for the future

 

[Leemundo]

Again thanks for the replies guys.

Being vertical I'll be looking for a nice looking card and and to be honest I'm not too fond of the latest FE cards. Better cooling but not easy on the eye. I'll be having a good look around it's just with open air I've heard the heat from the cases glass panel can be drawn into the card hence going for a blower style.

Here's the only pic I can find of my pc which shows my concern.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/copYaec5cAzsyGtcA

Thanks again.

Lee

 

[grec]

Given your CPU is watercooled I don't think a non-blower would cause any issues there, pretty much all the air exhausted by the GPU would be pulled out the 140mm exhaust so I don't think the air exhausting out the bottom of the GPU would be enough to heat the glass meaningfully, and as the intake air has to pass over the glass to reach the GPUs fans it'll likely keep the glass around there relatively cool(Compared to a horizontal mounted non-blower). Glass has a pretty low thermal conductivity compared to metals but a fairly high thermal capacity so it should retain most of the heat if not for highly sustained periods and release the majority through the external side of the glass panel anyway as that side has a lower ambient temperature than inside the case therefore giving a lower absolute thermal resistance (Or higher absolute thermal conductivity) on that side of the glass. Heat, like electricity, naturally takes the pass of least resistance when possible.

Edit: However, I'm not sure how reputable this site is but here's a blower RTX2080 for £560 inc. VAT apparently which seems quite cheap for a 2080 from what I've seen.

https://www.ballicom.co.uk/vcg20808...3VpcP6EfcRfTQfJ45h8F4IL71IF9EAE8aAtiZEALw_wcB

It might also be worth considering an AIO GPU watercooling kit if you can fit one, I believe you can get things to fit CPU ones to GPU chips but not sure if they work with Turing yet.

 

[Warchild]

PNY are fine. I believe they provided many blowers for manufacturers. Might be wrong, but they have a big input in the market that people didnt realise.

id take the pny card over the overpriced asus Turbo one.

 

[AlienALX]

I would not want a 20 series card on a blower.

On Maxwell it was fine. It just about did the job. On Pascal it was starting to get to the point where it was struggling, and if you wanted any overclock *at all* out of the card you needed water, or a after market cooler.

On Volta it simply was not adequate, which is why Nvidia have now changed their design to a dual fan cooler with a larger heatsink.

Personally I would now avoid blowers as much as you can. I know some one disagrees with me, but IMO you have not seen RT really pushing the cards hard.. Yet. Let's see what Metro Exodus does to them, then rethink a little. I think once these cards are stressed hard a blower will not be sufficient at all.

PNY don't make the blowers, that's Manli http://www.manli.com/en

They make all of Nvidia's stock coolers, as well as a few others. It is rare to see Manli branded cards, but OCUK sometimes has them and sell them as "OCUK" cards.

 

[grec]

Yeah PNY are a reasonable AIB brand I've just never seen that etailer before and thats £100 less than identical models from other brands using the same manli cooler on other etailers, but yeah, RTX2080 has a 215W TDP, which it won't normally hit in gaming at stock but yeah RT & DLSS and the like would certainly push it closer and overclocking could push it well beyond and really those blowers are only good for 150W cards I'd say, NVidia's FE ones used a big vapour chamber that allowed them to still be quite reasonable upto about 200W-250W at least in bursts but these direct contact aluminium fin ones aren't quite as good.
Edit: Nvm the RTX2080 ones use a large vapour chamber too from what I've seen so it might be reasonable, at least on some of the models not sure if that's all.

 

[Warchild]

I would not want a 20 series card on a blower.

On Maxwell it was fine. It just about did the job. On Pascal it was starting to get to the point where it was struggling, and if you wanted any overclock *at all* out of the card you needed water, or a after market cooler.

On Volta it simply was not adequate, which is why Nvidia have now changed their design to a dual fan cooler with a larger heatsink.

Personally I would now avoid blowers as much as you can. I know some one disagrees with me, but IMO you have not seen RT really pushing the cards hard.. Yet. Let's see what Metro Exodus does to them, then rethink a little. I think once these cards are stressed hard a blower will not be sufficient at all.

PNY don't make the blowers, that's Manli http://www.manli.com/en

They make all of Nvidia's stock coolers, as well as a few others. It is rare to see Manli branded cards, but OCUK sometimes has them and sell them as "OCUK" cards.

My gainward 1080ti Golden sample had a blower and it clocked higher than the FE card as well as stayed 10C lower. So they are not all bad. Peaked at 71C. I think having that temp when power and temp targets were maxed was quite good.

ref: manli, I thought it was someone like that. Couldnt quite remember who.

 

[Leemundo]

Thanks for the replies again guys, info is brilliant and opening my eyes allot to what I can consider as I was sure a blower was the better option.

The blowers on the market at the moment none are catching my fancy where as there are some lovely open air. I'll be sure to keep looking and as long as money permits I will have allot more options than the two cards I was originally looking at.

Thanks again guys, cleared quite a few bits up. Thermals not being an issue and no real need to over clock puts me in a much better spot. Specially knowing that the considerably more expensive cards pre overclocked are unlikely to get you much in the way of noticeable gains.

1440p and a more consistent higher FPS with Gsync of course I'll be over the moon with. (4k as nice as it may be I think is too over rated until cards can give you higher FPS).

����

 

[grec]

It's worth noting a lot of cards, especially the beefier ones, are often 2.5(Double bracket with cooler exceeding into third slot area) or full triple slot for the high end RTX models, so it's worth making sure you get a true 2 slot model where the heatsink/fans exceed no further than the double bracket to make sure the fans have breathing room.

 

[AlienALX]

Blowers are still better for ITX/crap air flow/SLi set ups but you should always get the beefiest cooler you can.

Personally speaking? I would avoid PNY. They are not very honest when it comes to warranty terms, and I have seen two chums turned down on warranty after the first year was up. And that was their Lifetime* Warranty.

* The lifetime of production of that exact card. So about two weeks.

 

[Leemundo]

Cheers again,

I didn't think about the thickness of the cooler. I think I've got quite a bit of clearance to the side panel luckily so should have enough room for breathing.

PNY are not sounding like a good buy from what I'm hearing, here and a few other places I've looked at in the past too!

Lee

 

[AlienALX]

Cheers again,

I didn't think about the thickness of the cooler. I think I've got quite a bit of clearance to the side panel luckily so should have enough room for breathing.

PNY are not sounding like a good buy from what I'm hearing, here and a few other places I've looked at in the past too!

Lee

PNY are very much a server/workstation company and always have been. They do make Quadros and stuff for workstations, and are far more involved in the professional sector. This never tends to translate well into gaming, and their cards are, well, fugly.

Sticking things like XLR8 on their coolers only used to compound this. And fake warranties too really don't get you a good name, especially when the card gets returned and they tell you to naff off.

Unless stated otherwise most cards only have a 1 year warranty. So be careful. When you decide what you want just run it by the guys here and we'll steer you right

 

[trawetSluaP]

Unless stated otherwise most cards only have a 1 year warranty. So be careful. When you decide what you want just run it by the guys here and we'll steer you right

This prompted me o check Nvidia's warranty as I bought a 2080 direct. Surprisingly it's 3 years.