14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA fully expects the GeForce GTX Titan Black graphics cards to sell well to that admittedly small percentage of high-end customers, but it's taking a more active role for once, even having a definite plan for the resulting funds.
The GeForce GTX Titan Black is and will keep selling normally, through retailers. That doesn't mean that the Santa Clara, California-based company can't hatch grander plans though.
In this case, NVIDIA has introduced a custom desktop personal computer featuring the video board. A green computer to be specific.
And by green, we mean that the system has been painted over in NVIDIA's trademark color, not that it's all that energy-efficient.
High-end desktops might use the usual set of hardware- and software-based power allocation techniques, but top-tier products like GTX Titan Black eat a lot of electricity no matter how much you optimize things in the BIOS.
No, the whole point of the new computer is to sell the board and raise money in the process. Money that will go to the Philip Scholz Memorial Foundation.
The foundation was created in the honor of Philip Scholz, a man that pushed a person out of the path of an oncoming train and lost his life in the act. He was also close with several NVIDIA higher-ups.
The foundation provides scholarships to young men and women that lack the financial means to follow through on their education. The scholarships also promote baseball and other outdoor physical activities.
Spec-wise, the “One-of-a-Kind Falcon Northwest Tiki Gaming PC Powered by GeForce GTX Titan Black” boasts an Intel Core i7-4770K CPU (the fastest Intel chip on the market), an ASUS z87 Maximus motherboard, 16 GB G.Skill DDR3 memory, and two Crucial M50 SSDs (1 TB each).
All the hardware is packed inside a custom Tiki tower, painted with NVIDIA's green, as we’ve said, and also bearing the company logo on the side panel.
It sounds awesome in theory, but looking at the photos of the product might leave you more ambivalent than eager, since the paint job isn't exactly gleaming or smooth-looking. Or maybe it's just the lighting? We'll let you decide for yourselves.
There's also a side window cut in the shape of the video card itself, which happens to stand vertically instead of horizontally. It's also located in the upper part of the chassis.
There is no price because the product is up on auction. The bid at the time of this article's writing was of just over $6,600 / €4,721 on eBay.