MSI and Corsair offer the ultimate, limitless GTX 980Ti

Oct 9, 2015 11:57 GMT  ·  By

In September, Corsair and MSI announced that they're teaming up to build liquid cooling solutions for the latest graphics card from NVIDIA and AMD, the GTX 980Ti and the Radeon R9 Fury. Now, MSI and Corsair have launched the first card that resulted from their collaboration, the GTX 980Ti Seahawk.

While MSI provides the custom PCB, cover and the rest of the wiring, Corsair will contribute to the final product with the water pump, blower fan, baseplate and the Hydro GFX external cooler.

The cooler and the Corsair-owned HG10 technology is apparently licensed by Corsair to MSI allowing the graphics cards manufacturer to sell one of the fastest and definitely one of the most overclockable GeForce GTX 980 Ti cards on the planet.

Apparently, Corsair enabled the Hydro GFX to allow the GTX 980Ti go well past even the Titan X performance. With a much higher TDP allowed on the card, custom manufacturers like MSI are helped by NVIDIA to achieve higher clocks. Add to that liquid cooling and you've got yourself a true monster.

The reference model of the card had an 83 degrees Celsius internal limit, and afterwards the boost clocks are reduced to prevent the card from going up in flames.

The MSI Seahawk GTX 980Ti can beat Titan X in core frequency

The Hydro GFX cooling solution doesn't have a point where the card automatically stops performance in order to cool down, it will heat up as long as its TDP allows it.

And to make sure the GPU will never go up in flames, the Hydro GFX is built specifically to cool down the GPU. The base plate and blower are there only to cool the power circuitry and video memory. Therefore, cooling on the MSI Seahawk GTX 980Ti is split: one solution for the GPU only, and another for the memory and circuitry.

The benchmarks shown by Corsair are made with a rig consisting of an Intel Core i7 6700K running at 4.6GHz, 16GB of DDR4 RAM a 480GB SSD and an ASUS Z170 Deluxe motherboard. Even though the out-of-the-box Seahawk model is 15% better than the reference design users can obviously boost it even further, reaching only the limit of the card's TDP.

For just $739 (‎€650), the super card can be yours to pre-order on Corsair's official page.  

Reference GTX 980 Ti Hydro GFX Difference
GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
CUDA Cores 2816 2816
Default Clock 1000 MHz 1190 MHz +19%
Boost Clock 1075 MHz 1291 MHz +20%
Memory 6GB GDDR5 6GB GDDR5
Memory Clock 7000 MHz 7096 MHz +2%
Memory Bus 384-bit 384-bit
Rated TDP 250W 260W +4%
Maximum TDP 275W (10%) 280W (7%) +2%

GTX 980Ti Seahawk (3 Images)

Corsair and MSI's GTX 980Ti Seahawk is has ultimate cooling power
Corsair and MSI's GTX 980Ti Seahawk is has ultimate cooling powerCorsair and MSI's GTX 980Ti Seahawk is has ultimate cooling power
Open gallery