14 DAY TRIAL // High-quality video card and mainboard manufacturer EVGA announced today the availability of the EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Hydro Copper on its official website.
The card offers a preinstalled Hydro Copper Waterblock that reduces the GPU operating temperature by as much as 50%.
The performance of a water cooler is highly influenced by the potency of the water pump and the radiator fan speeds, along with the coolant, the configuration and quality of the radiator.
However, we have no doubt the 50% temperature reduction can be achieved with a decent water cooling kit.
Additionally, the EVGA GeForce GTX 680 comes with a 5 Phase PWM Design and 8pin + 6pin power connectors, thus being optimized for overclocking.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Hydro Copper features increased clock speeds of 1215MHz (boost clock) and 1150MHz (base clock) up from the default 1006 MHz (base clock) in the Nvidia reference design. The memory has further been pre-overclocked and comes with a factory frequency of 6300MHz up from the reference 6008 Mhz.
The card and the water block will cost the US buyers 699.99 USD and around 525 EUR for European customers.
The water block can also be purchased separately for 159.99 USD, that’s almost 120 EUR.
First water block buyers should pay attention to the configuration of their water block and they should make sure it is able to cool off more than the reference 195 watts of dissipated heat and use high-quality thermal interface as no cooling efficiency will ever compensate for the lack of proper heat transfer.
Also consider the fact that the power connector of the card is double decked so, if your water cooler fails for some reason, you won’t be able to quickly refit your card with a custom cooler as not all of them are compatible with these tall power connectors.
