A low-temp, low-noise, beauty
At this point, we’re probably all aware of the power wielded by the GTX 980 Ti. It’s a graphics processor sitting somewhere between polygon perfection and a trip to your local loan shark. Granted, it’s quite a bit cheaper than a Titan X, and contains only half the memory and a couple of hundred fewer CUDA cores. Yet, with a kick in the overclocking chops, it’ll easily keep pace, if not outperform that juggernaut when push comes to shove. So what gives? Why are we looking at this card again? After all, it’s already in this month’s group test.
Simply put, we were presented with a card that defies all logic and reason. Zotac’s Arctic Storm edition is a fascinating take on a concept as old as custom PCs – effective cooling. The card packs three 92mm fans on top of a full-cover copper waterblock. What does this mean? Two things. Firstly, it’s a card that can be run straight out of the box. You don’t need a water-cooled rig to utilise the 980 Ti’s powerful frame wrenching abilities. Secondly, if you’re willing to toy with water-cooling loops, this beastie can become a silent but violent solution to all of your graphical woes.
As for performance, this card is nothing short of unstoppable. It overclocks like a monster (mostly thanks to Maxwell’s crazy GPU architecture). Even at stock, the frame rates will satisfy the most avid 1440p gamer. If you do delve into the realm of water and electricity, however, you’ll find the card will run at around 29°C at idle and roughly 50°C at load – a whole 30°C lower than purely using the stock cooler. Generally, this’ll lead to the 0dB fan tech kicking in, allowing the card to turn deafly silent, even while gaming. However, what we found best was to actually keep the fans running at a constant 40 per cent power. This way the water block acts in conjunction with the heat-pipes and fans to create a mini radiator buried in the middle of your chassis, meaning you can decrease the overall temperature of your watercooled rig and CPU temps in the process.
Zotac’s crazy solution doesn’t come without its flaws. The barbs fittings are less than to be desired.We’ve been told you can reorient them, but we didn’t manage it with all of the strength and tools in the office. And it’ll also void your warranty, as you can possibly damage the o-rings on the fittings. Secondly, those barbs stop you from utilising any hard tubing, a recent trend in the water-cooling community. With simple G1/4 mounting points instead, this card might be nigh on perfect.
Concerning performance, you don’t get much more from it when it’s under water, as the cooling solution is already more than enough. At most, you’ll gain around 20–30MHz on the core clock. An increase, but nothing to shout about. Ultimately, this card comes down to noise and flexibility. If you already have a custom loop, throw this GPU in. If you’re just interested in running it on air, you can do that, too. Want a silent gaming machine? Sure thing. Want it even cooler than that? No problem. The possibilities are endless. There are concerns, especially if you’re looking to run two in SLI and water, or with the orientation of the barbs, but it’s still an outstanding graphics-rendering monster. ZAK STOREY
SPECIFICATIONS
GPU GM 200 Maxwell
CUDA cores 2,816
ROPs 96
Transistors 8 billion
Memory capacity 6,144MB
TDP 250W
Connectivity 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, 1x DVI-I