Congrats to the new 780ti owners - Enjoy!
This may sound daft, but stick with me, I wish the 780ti DIDN'T have such a nice looking and effective air cooler. Why? Well, I'm totally hooked on water cooling now so cannot do anything else (it's an OCD thing I suspect lol) and it seems a shame to remove such a nice looking and effective cooler. Also, you can tell that a good chunk of the purchase price is going towards the looks and ability of said cooler.
When I bought my EVGA 680's I had zero qualms removing the stock coolers. Sure, they worked fine, but they were the usual cheap plastic stock coolers we expected back then. I suspect the "sensible" (not that we can really use that word with high-end kit like this) thing to do would be to wait for a Hydro Copper or somesuch with a pre-fitted water block. However, you seem to
really pay a premium for those - making the self-fit option more cost effective.
I wonder if we'll see any 3rd party coolers on these cards? If so, I wonder if they'd work out cheaper? Might make a better candidate for water cooling
In many ways this makes the 290X the ideal project for watercooling. The critisims of this card seem be solely in regards to the noise and heat it produces. With prices as they stand, will we see more enthusiast who like to water cool going for the 290X + water block option do you think? When I first got my 2nd GTX 570, and noise and heat started to become an issue in an enclosed space with the cards in close proximty, keeping all that cool and quiet using water cooling became quite the mission for me - it was a FUN mission too.
Anyway, loving the GTX 780 despite the price, though I think there's still some life in my pair of GTX 680's for a while - even if a SINGLE 780ti is making them a little less impressive than they once were
Scoob.
