14 DAY TRIAL // Inno3D doesn't seem to joke around, however, when it comes to turning the GTX 980Ti into its main graphics card flagship.
The ridiculous name, however, isn't exactly gratuitous, as it comes from a massive custom air cooling system, which features not two, not three, but four cooling fans. Three cooling the main GPU heatsink, and one along the card's top, cooling the memory and VRM.
The main heatsink, a little over two slots thick, comes with a meaty aluminum fin stack heatsink and with two aluminum fin stacks projecting from a central base. This heatsink is ventilated by three 100 mm fans, placed on a metal shroud, which is easily detachable by turning a few thumbscrews. There is a second heatsink that draws heat from the heatspreader covering the memory and VRM, using a flat heat pipe, dissipating it under air-flow by a 60 mm spinner.
Heavy industry
As the entire cooling "factory" above the actual PCB is not really to be trifled with, also the card itself isn't something to be ignored. Offering factory-overclocked speeds of 1152 MHz core, 1241 MHz CPU Boost, and 7200 MHz GDDR5 memory (compared to the stock speeds of 1000 MHz core, 1076 MHz GPU Boost, and 7012 MHz memory speed), we can see some sensible differences between this overclocked monster and the stock card. Especially welcome are the extra 200MHz memory speeds that are the greatest boost I've seen for memory speeds from any aftermarket manufacturer.
Except the extra boosting, the PCB design remains quite the same, featuring an 8-phase VRM, 6-pin +8-pin PCIe connectors. Display ports are exactly as default, with three DisplayPorts connectors, one HDMI 2.0, and one dual-link DVI-I connector.
However, with the GTX 980 Ti iChill X4 Ultra being a monster card with a monster name, I'm glad Inno3D hasn't considered installing variable fan speed/activation and other eco-friendly mumbo jumbo. The X4 Ultra is built around a massive cooling system, so what would be the point of turning itself off? It could even bring functioning issues as intermittent runs could damage the system.
In the end, the GTX 980 Ti iChill X4 Ultra should be respected for what it is, an incredible machine that deserves nothing less but a respectably long and annoying name that someone will always find a way to shorten down.
