Should let the GF100 chill a great deal

May 20, 2010 07:55 GMT  ·  By

As soon as NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480, with support for DirectX 11, finally came out, there were two things that caught consumers’ eyes. One was the fact that the GTX 480 proved to be the fastest graphics adapter on the market. The other aspect was the fact that both newcomers were hotter than the average board. The latter of these traits was an exclamation mark for many end-users, despite the fact that, according to NVIDIA, the GF100 is supposed to run hot. Of course, where there is a will, there is a way, and EVGA has the way.

The will, in this case, is for the operational temperature to be somehow pushed lower than the reference cooler allows. Normally, this would require a custom-build cooler, with extra fins and fans. Such solutions, however, almost always end up taking up too much space (multiple PCI Express slots), making a dent in the capability of a system to house multi-GPU configurations. As such, EVGA decided to provide a thinner and more effective solution, based on water cooling.

Known as the Hydro Copper waterblock, the cooling solution was created in collaboration with Swiftech and is compatible with the GeForce GTX 470. It is composed of a base plate of chrome plated electrolytic C100 copper, a 0.6 x 0.6 mm thin pin matrix, an integrated heatpipe that connects to the power mosfet heatsink and, of course, high-flow fittings for 1/2-inch and 3/8-inch sizes. The entire mechanism is built in such a way so as to take on the heat from not just the GPU, but also the I/O chips, VREG area and the memory.

The EVGA Hydro Copper Waterblock is quite noteworthy through the fact that it is compatible with 2-way, 3-way and 4-way SLI setups. Those interested will be able to acquire it for $139.99.