Friday, August 20th 2010
Swiftech Intros Hybrid Water Cooling Solutions for NVIDIA GF100-based Graphics Cards
Swiftech released a pair of hybrid cooling solutions for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480, GTX 470 and GTX 465 graphics cards, that are aimed to provide better cooling compared to full-coverage water blocks. The principle revolves around treating the GPU as a separate thermal zone from the rest of the card, so that water-cooling can focus on cooling the GPU, while heat from the GPU isn't transferred to the rest of the relatively cooler heat producing parts (such as memory chips, VRM FETs, etc.). Swiftech's offer includes MCW-GTX480 and MCW-GTX470 (which should be compatible with GTX 465 reference design, too). These consist of the MCW80 GPU water block that's designed to handle the thermal loads of GF100, and a full-coverage aluminum heatsink that covers all critical heat-producing areas on the PCB, including the memory chips and the VRM. The heatsink is further designed such that the user can mount an 80 mm fan onto it, for even higher cooling performance. The sets are priced lower than most full-coverage water-blocks, the MCW80-GTX480 is priced at $99.95, while the MCW80-GTX470 goes for $98.95.
12 Comments on Swiftech Intros Hybrid Water Cooling Solutions for NVIDIA GF100-based Graphics Cards
I used two MCW80's with my 470's and they worked fine with the reference plate. Even kept the fan on at 30% to help cool the vrm/memory chips.
This new Hybrid part looks sweet too. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the fan on mine and using (what looks like) the bigger and/or more efficient heatsink for the other components. But I guess I'm not willing to spend the extra money to do that right now. Besides $100 is a lot of money towards a nice full EK block, no?