EVGA's GTX 1080 Ti SC2 uses a PCB that's very close to the Founders Edition (reference), but with added RGB lighting and iCX sensors; VRM circuitry is unchanged. Out of the box, the card comes overclocked to a base clock of 1557 MHz, which is a decent overclock, but certainly not the highest you'll find on a GTX 1080 Ti. This overclock gives the EVGA SC2 a 4% performance increase over the Founders Edition, making the card 30% faster than the GTX 1080 and almost twice as fast as the GTX 980 Ti, R9 Fury X, and GTX 1070. With such performance levels, the GTX 1080 Ti is a great option for 4K gaming as it does achieve 60 FPS at the highest settings in most of our titles. EVGA did not overclock the memory chips, which could have yielded a little bit of easy extra performance as these new 11 Gbps GDDR5X chips work really well and reach close to 1500 MHz - a few MHz above 1376 MHz should have been no problem.

Unlike many other custom designs, the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 comes with a dual-slot cooler that provides much better thermal performance than the Founders Edition, and it will still fit all cases. Temperatures are as low as 69°C, which is far away from the thermal limit of 84°C beyond which the driver will start reducing Boost clocks. Many thermal pads provide plenty of cooling for the VRM circuitry. The cooler also leaves an excellent visual impression thanks to the metal frame construction, which looks clean and of high quality; adjustable RGB lighting is included as well. A highlight of the SC2 is EVGA's iCX technology, which provides nine thermal sensors: eight additional sensors spread around the PCB plus the GPU's built-in temperature measurement, which provides a much more complete picture of the card's thermal state. EVGA also includes a crucial feature, which is idle-fan-stop, something that's sadly missing from the NVIDIA Founders Edition. It provides a perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, and even light gaming. Gaming fan noise is improved over the reference design, but with 37 dBA, it is much higher than on most competing custom boards; however, those also use large triple-slot coolers. Also, the fan curve in the BIOS seems to favor temperatures a bit more than good noise levels.

Power consumption of "Pascal" is amazing, and the GTX 1080 Ti is no exception here. Unlike other board vendors, the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 doesn't trade as much power efficiency for higher out-of-the-box clocks, which means efficiency is only reduced by 4%, whereas other cards lose 15% or so, but they also use a revamped voltage regulation circuitry and run at higher voltages. EVGA did not upgrade the power input configuration, so their power limit is set kinda low, which costs the card a little bit of performance and might complicate overclocking slightly.

Price-wise, the GTX 1080 Ti SC2 clocks in at $750, which feels like a bit much, especially when you can find overclocked dual-slot cards below $700. The SC2 is a clear upgrade over the Founders Edition, but I find it hard to justify the cost; if it were $720, then yeah, definitely go for it. My guess is that the price is due to EVGA's GTX 1080 Ti product stack, starting with the regular SC priced at $720, which lacks iCX sensors and RGB LEDs, but comes with the same cooler and clocks. So another $30 is basically the RGB and iCX tax - not sure if that's worth it, especially when you consider that the FTW3 with higher clocks, all the same features, and a better triple-fan cooler sits at $780.