14 DAY TRIAL // After the release of NVIDIA's enthusiast-grade GeForce GTX 480, makers of custom cooling solutions were fast in launching waterblocks meant to deal with its considerably high temperatures, and MSI even showed off a water-cooled model at Computex, the GTX 480 Hydrogen, the very same board that has now been set up for pre-order.
Basically, the DirectX 11-ready GTX 480 is considered the fastest single-GPU consumer-oriented reference graphics card on the planet right now, though its power draw and heat generation are on the high side as well.
Thus, Micro-Star International took the board and strapped onto it a single-slot, all-copper waterblock that weighs 830 grams and covers about 70 percent of the PCB (printed circuit board).
MSI also implemented a 0.45mm micro-channel design and G 1/4-inch threads.
Furthermore, the company made a point of including its well known Military Class components, such as the Solid State Chokes, Solid Capacitors and Hi-C CAP.
Basically, the newcomer should be both more stable and far cooler than the reference model, and MSI claims that the operational temperature is actually 20 degrees lower than the usual one.
As for actual specifications, reference clocks were kept, which means the GF100 GPU is clocked at 700 MHz, the shaders at 1,401 MHz and the 1,536 MB of GDDR5 VRAM at 3,696 MHz.
All in all, Micro-Star International decided to just keep the stock specifications, which are already of the highest tier anyway, in order to drive the heat generation as low as possible.
Needless to say, the board supports NVIDIA's various technologies, such as 3-way SLI, PhysX, CUDA and 3D Vision Surround, making it more than capable of handling any game, on its own or in multi-GPU setups.
Finally, the MSI GeForce GTX HydroGen has a memory interface of 384 bits, uses dual-DVI and mini-HDMI outputs and has reportedly already been set up for pre-order, priced at £445.89, the equivalent of $694.22.