GIGABYTE GTX 680 SuperOverclock WindForce 5X Pictured Some More

[btarunr]

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.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[theonedub]

At least fix the stickers on the fans so that the Gigabyte logo is oriented correctly when viewed installed in a case.

 

[Capitan Harlock]

very cool but for me the right name is super brick xd looks like a semipassive but with 5 littlefans xd

 

[bear jesus]

Now i see that it's both heat pipes and a vapor chamber i am quite curious how well the heatsink its self performs.

 

[PopcornMachine]

Interesting design. Very curious as to how well this one cools and how quiet it is.

But still wouldn't want a 3-slot card.

 

[Hayder_Master]

GIGABYTE GTX 680 Wind Noise 5X

 

[HossHuge]

So they want to blow hot air directly into the motherboard?

 

[CoreDuo]

So they want to blow hot air directly into the motherboard?

The way I understand it, the fans pull heat away from the card and towards the side panel where one or more fan slots would typically be in such a configuration.

 

[m1dg3t]

Fugly. I have 1 fan that size in one of my rig's and it SCREAMs! I can imagine what 4 sound like :shadedshu

 

[btarunr]

So they want to blow hot air directly into the motherboard?

The fans are pointing outward.

 

[CoreDuo]

Fugly. I have 1 fan that size in one of my rig's and it SCREAMs! I can imagine what 4 sound like :shadedshu

Yeah, they're the same kind of blowers typically found in rackmount servers.

 

[m1dg3t]

Yeah, they're the same kind of blowers typically found in rackmount servers.

It's where I got mine lol

 

[rooivalk]

I think it would be nicer if they're using bigger and fewer fans like Zalman ZM-80C HP

and maybe add slider to the fan similiar to razer imperator side button mechanism, so it's still could be SLI-ed.

 

[wickerman]

I agree with rooivalk, I can't imagine why anyone would want to add 5 of those horrible little noise makers to their case, those fans are likely to be louder than the stock unit. Granted the heatsink carries a lot more surface area and nothing would stop you from ripping those stupid fans off and rigging up a few 120s along side...but why on earth did they thing this was a good idea

I'm always willing to pay a premium for a better cooler, but the first box on my checklist is of improvements over the reference design is noise levels. If this is actually louder than the reference design, I really won't consider it as an option.

 

[Huddo93]

In my opinion, this is one of the ugliest GTX 680 cooler designs to date.. It isn't even a full cover design!.. On top of that, if those 40mm fans are anything like the old ones i used to have once upon a time, they will be loud as hell. Now gigabyte.. I understand you wanted to stand out, but this is just ridiculous.

 

[grammaton_feather]

Modern fan motors can be quiet. Even 40mm unless they're travelling at insane speeds. The 5 x fans on the giga SO will be speed restricted. You won't hear any high pitch whine. Since it's a super-overclock and since gigabyte super-overclocks tend to be the most extreme in terms of factory overclocks then it should be worth checking out.

 

[HossHuge]

Best case senario would either these Delta fans (6.5CFM 18.5 dBA) or these SilenX fans (5CFM 14 dBA).

 

[Huddo93]

If ever I want to read a bunch of dumb assumptions... I always come here

Modern fan motors can be quiet. Even 40mm unless they're travelling at insane speeds. The 5 x fans on the giga SO will be speed restricted. You won't hear any high pitch whine. Since it's a super-overclock and since gigabyte super-overclocks tend to be the most extreme in terms of factory overclocks then it should be worth checking out rather than making assumptions based on some 8 year old mini fan you ran at 2000rpm.

Still not the only problem with I have with it though >.<

 

[dj-electric]

Mother of copper...

 

[DarkOCean]

What is this, a semi passive heatsink?

 

[hhumas]

its cooler is awesome

 

[PLAfiller]

Oh yeah, this morning is getting better and better. I hoped they would release more info on this card and here we go. Good work, TPU news-team.
Ontopic: full frontal assault, that's such a cool card. Now the GPU-suppprt devices, some PC cases have, will definitely justify their existance. Talk about sagging . It's double the size of a Saphirre Nettop. Pure copper brick, what more can a gamer ask for

 

[Chaitanya]

Gigabyte will definitely win an awards for this card: The Noisiest Video card on the earth.

 

[Kenny646]

I don't see all the hate..if they made this and it sucked on the mega fail stick, they wouldn't put it as the "super overclock edition". I think that 5x 40mm would probably deliver about the same airflow as those 3x 60mm windforce (they are 60mm right?) coolers, presuming they use high quality ones.

Can't wait to see the teardown of this thing, the heatsink looks mysterious

 

[DOM]

I can't belive they really came out with this.... They should call it shit bricks