Monday, April 30th 2012

GIGABYTE GTX 680 SuperOverclock WindForce 5X Pictured Some More

Unveiled earlier this month, GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 680 SuperOverclock has been an attention magnet thanks to its WindForce 5X cooling solution, which you'll either love or hate. Coolaler.com got to spend some time with this card, more importantly, to dissemble it. The cooler is found to occupy 3 expansion slots in your system, which isn't exactly new, no thanks to ASUS and its DirectCu II solution. The entire volume of card's cooling area is occupied by a gigantic heatsink.

At the base of WindForce 5X cooling solution is a vapor-chamber plate, which draws heat from the GPU and memory chips. This plate makes contact with five 8 mm-thick copper heat-pipes. These pipes pass through the gargantuan heatsink in a closed loop. There are five 40 mm fans arranged on top of the card to ventilate the heatsink. These fans occupy extra space on the top-side of the card, since as we mentioned, almost the entire volume of the cooler's space is occupied by the heatsink. The back side of the card was also shown, fitted with a back-plate, with as many as four NEC Tokin proadlizers peeking out of a cutout. Other components on the back side are hard to make out.
Source: Coolaler
Add your own comment

47 Comments on GIGABYTE GTX 680 SuperOverclock WindForce 5X Pictured Some More

#26
function69
Need a real review with sound and heat levels.
Posted on Reply
#27
20mmrain
Okay they want to use the blower fans .... I can see that... while at load it will work very nicely for air cooling. But they should of pointed them this way..... Out the back.



I know I performed a mod a long time ago like I am showing and ... while it was ugly as hell.... I saw temps in the max of 56c highly overclocked with a gtx 280
Posted on Reply
#28
Sinzia
I wonder when w1zz will get one for review? ;)
Posted on Reply
#29
Animalpak
server/ghetto mode style cooler... This card is made just for some test bench
Posted on Reply
#30
Bjorn_Of_Iceland
Looks noisy.. and it looks like it would heat up the memory instead with the GPU conducted together with the mems on the coldplate.
Posted on Reply
#31
chodaboy19
20mmrainOkay they want to use the blower fans .... I can see that... while at load it will work very nicely for air cooling. But they should of pointed them this way..... Out the back.

www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=46895&stc=1&d=1335781667

I know I performed a mod a long time ago like I am showing and ... while it was ugly as hell.... I saw temps in the max of 56c highly overclocked with a gtx 280
The fins and heatpipes are not designed for rear exhaust. If you look at the heatsink design it's basically like a CPU heatsink, which forced them to go with the side fans, unless they just copied ASUS and put 2 large fans on top.
Posted on Reply
#32
PLAfiller
20mmrain, at first I didn't get what do you mean. But now I do. Yeah it's a great idea combined with a focused air-flow in the form of the honeycomb of CM X6 looks really efficient. But such a layout would be more appropriate to a vertically positioned GPU (like with Silverstone cases) it seems to me though. Can't w8 to see someone experiment with that. (they should announce a modding competition for GPU cooling system among the Hardware enthusiasts. I think some great ideas will pop up)
Posted on Reply
#33
THE_EGG
Yuck, I hope they have another version with a different cooler. This will disrupt the airflow so much in vertically aligned cases like the Silverstone FT02.
Posted on Reply
#36
rcodi
Haters gonna hate but I think this card is badass.
Posted on Reply
#37
radrok
ColdRushHaters gonna hate but I think this card is badass.
I agree, this card is beautiful :)
Posted on Reply
#38
PopcornMachine
I'm sure if it's noisy they'll just say that most people don't overclock that high so it doesn't matter.

It was a good business decision to use several noisy fans.
Posted on Reply
#39
L'Eliminateur
i've read all the comments and they're pretty interesting, but let's get some stuff staright from both side:
  1. This card is not advertised as "silent"
  2. those 1U fans are screamers, that's true now as it was 5yrs ago, you simply cannot generate a lot of airflow and pressure without going into the upper 6K rpms on these fans. In fact, modern 1U RM server fans are ~5cm deep and push 8K rpm at full speed and they drill your mind(but have a lower speed of less than 1K rpm)
  3. Gigabyte has the "bling" factor with this, noone has tried anything like this, and they put FIVE of them, so yeah, that's quit the bling bling factor(massive vapor plate, HUGE 9mm heatpipes, 5 x full-PWM screamers, unconventional cooling flow, BIG heatsink and exotic power delivery)
  4. in a open case this thing will perform great, or if you have enough clearance between the card and the side panel to exhaust the heat (probably a side panel 200mm fan in exhaust mode)
Posted on Reply
#40
PopcornMachine
Bling or not, if it's really noisy people will get something else.

Fortunately in this case there are plenty of alternatives.
Posted on Reply
#41
L'Eliminateur
you're mistaken in that aspect, people will buy it even if it makes more noise than a 747 taking off.

Same reason as people bought the dustbutser in the past: because it's fast

and same reason people buy cases with 10 mind-bending fans like the CM HAF series, noone in their right mind would buy that for accoustics, yet it's one of the most popular "high end overclocker" cases
Posted on Reply
#43
PLAfiller
I don't know if you're right, but from experience: I have a Thermaltake Extreme Spirit 2 on my SB. This cooler has a 40mm bugger, that runs at 4200rpm and is literary dead silent. I have to put my ear 1cm close and there is no 'swoosh' what-so-ever. I've run it at 5200rpm and then the noise is barely audile. It's true, that it pishes very little air, but jusy enough to get the job done. And there are some really quiet 40mm fans out there (Scythe for example.) If you are gonna spend 900 euro on a card, I don't think a couple more for a set of 5 small fans are gonna break the bank. I'm just saying it could be moderately loud card. Not silent, but moderately.
Posted on Reply
#44
L'Eliminateur
well as an addendum to my posts, they seem to be 1cm thick fans, those won't be loud(nor push much air either) even at high rpms..
i'll tell you more, searching in Delta(pretty much the only good fan maker) yields interesting results:
for 40x40x10 fans the mightiest one can barely push 0.55 CMM(~9CFM) @8000rpm and the noisiest one is no more than 35.5dBA....

the fans i thought it had where 40x40x48 and those are server fans that work at 13000rpm and those push .850 CMM (30 CFM)
Posted on Reply
#45
micropage7
its better add 1 big fan than put several small size fan
but for design (minus the fans) it looks OK for me
Posted on Reply
#46
PopcornMachine
If you want a card with bling, the Palit GTX 680 JetStream just reviewed has far more than this one. And it's extremely quite for this powerful of a GPU. Though it still takes 3 slots, which sucks.

www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_680_Jet_Stream/27.html

This Gigabyte card is just a curiosity to me. Will be interesting, but I will be surpised if it doesn't have a server whine to it.
Posted on Reply
#47
TurdFergasun
they could be loud, but this design sure looks ideal for a cramped SLI setup which allows proper ventilation.
Posted on Reply
Add your own comment
Nov 27th, 2024 17:58 EST change timezone

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts