14 DAY TRIAL // While the performance leadership of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 and, especially, GTX 480 is mostly unquestioned, it came at the cost of a very high operating temperature, which has given even the elaborate reference cooler a difficult time. Enthusiasts should not fear, however, as where there is a will, there is a way and hardware makers have already begun showing off their special water cooling solutions compatible with the adapters (and especially the GTX 480). One of the first to reveal water-cooled GTX 400 models was EVGA, whose large family of DirectX 11 NVIDIA cards includes two models outfitted with the Hydro Copper waterblock.
The Hydro Copper is composed of a C110 Copper baseplate, and Integrated 0.6mm thin pin matrix for optimal thermal transfer, extra high-flow designed internals and barbs and cools not just the GPU, but also the VREG and memory.
When EVGA introduced its NVIDIA-based tessellation monsters, it didn't give much information on the exact benefits of using the Hydro Copper. More recently, however, the company showed off some temperature results that look nothing short of enthralling. The exact system configuration used was not elaborated upon but, instead of the stock 83 degrees for the GTX 470 and 95 degrees for the GTX 480, the GeForce GTX 400 Hydro Copper FTW models only reached 38 and 49 degrees, respectively, under load.
It should probably be noted that the Hydro Copepr FTW models reached these temperatures while being factory overcloked. The GTX 480 has the GPU, shaders and memory clocked at 750MHz, 1,500MHz and 3,800MHz respectively, whereas the GTX 470 runs at 650/1300/3402 MHz. In the end, the only drawback that these cards have is their higher prices, namely $650 and $500, respectively.
Until the cards become available, on April 12, enthusiasts will have enough time to decide if the drop in temperatures is enough to offset the price tags.
