14 DAY TRIAL // After NVIDIA launched its very hot GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 DirectX 11-ready graphics cards, various companies unleashed water coolers designed especially for them, but Swiftech figured it would do a better job at driving temperatures down by offering a cross between a heatsink and a waterblock.
What Swiftech created is a pair of hybrid coolers which merge the benefits of the MCW80 waterblock and the GTX400 series heatsinks.
The two newcomers are simply called MCW80 GTX480 and MCW80 GTX470, obviously meant for the GTX 480 and GTX 470 boards, respectively.
Though one may think that a full-waterblock solution would be more effective than something of this type, Swiftech disagrees.
The main asset of its hybrids, it says, is that, since the memory, I/O and power mosfets are air-cooled, less heat goes into the liquid cooling loop.
The GTX-400 series of heatsinks themselves are custom aluminum extrusions that are precision CNC machined, which allows optimum TIM joints with the hottest components, like the VRM, though high-quality thermal paste is necessary.
The memory and the other, less heat-intensive perts make do with pre-applied thermal pads.
Essentially, this combination makes the graphics processing unit the exclusive beneficiary of the liquid cooling solution itself, driving temperatures lower and, consequently, improving the overclocking headroom.
“The performance advantage of the MCW80 GPU cooler over full-cover water-block solutions is well known among enthusiast users: improved thermal conductivity thanks to Swiftech's Diamond Pin Matrix, and less heat dumped into the liquid cooling loop coming from memory, I/O and power mosfets since they remain air cooled,” states the company.
Enthusiasts may finally be able to perform some serious overclocking on these high-tier products, so long as they are willing to part with $99.95 and $98.95 for the MCW80-GTX480 and MCW80-GTX470, respectively. Full information on the products may be found here.