New to water cooling, please help.

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Phat Cawks

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Jun 22, 2013
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Hey y'all. I have a problem, bought a pretty decent computer a few months ago (from a friend) and I wanted to upgrade my video card. Well thing is wanted to try out water cooling and I have a question.

The current video card I have right now is a Gigabyte 7950. I just wanted to know if I could use the same series of video cards but from different manufacturers.

I was planing to grab two GTX680's because they are on sale because of the new series that came out from nVidia recently. The thing is one is from eVGA and another from Asus and I was just wondering if they would be compatible.

Sorry I had to update just because I guess it's vague -- I'm not giving enough information. The video cards I've been looking at are the Asus GTX 680 4GB and the eVGA GTX 680+ 4GB since that's the only 680's that are in stock that aren't in the 4GB flavor. I am playing to do a triple monitor setup in the new future here.
 
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manofchalk
As long as its the same model card, you can mix and match brands all you want. Only thing at might cause issues is that one could overclock further than the other, so if you run them at that frequency you will have issues as the weaker card cant hold that stably. If you do everything proper, you should be fine.

In regards to water-block compatibility, if they both use a reference PCB than underneath the coolers they will be identical. But considering that your getting 4GB cards (I question why, a 680 is hardly an upgrade from a 7950) I don't think that they will be reference design. You may have to go for Universal blocks.

My advice on what to do, either go with Thequn's suggestion and just get another 7950. Or use the budget for dual...
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Phat Cawks

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Jun 22, 2013
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Yeah that would good but I live in Canada and Newgg has one of those going for about almost 700$ on the Canadian website~~ way out of my price range for one video card... Thank you for the suggestion though.

I was just wondering if they would fit properly if I bought two video cards they are the same series but just from different manufacturer's. I mean the water block, would they fit properly? Right? I was going to do a SLi setup.
 
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toolmaker_03

toolmaker_03

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Well I never bought the 600 series cards because of the stability issues that the cards have had from the get go, so mixing manufactures would not be suggested at all, lots of unknown issues will occur and it my not function at all.
 
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thequn

thequn

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No two gtx 580 would cost more and ultimately down grade you. from what you could / would have for much cheaper.

Since you already have an Amd 7950 just get a second one, the manufacture of the card dose not matter at all, The only issue I foresee is clock speeds but if you have a program like, MSI Afterburner it will auto set both cards to the same freq/setting /voltage for you.

if you want to water cool the hard its gonna to cost you a bit its about 100 dollars for water blocks for most gpus pulse the fee from (Assuming you don't already have water cooling) building you own water cooling loop the kits can make is cost less like the Xspc or the Ek kits so you looking at 400 dollars for water cooling parts pulse the cost of the second 7950 gpu.
 
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toolmaker_03

toolmaker_03

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For me, water cooling my video cards is so that when I get two hours into game play. I do not have to shut the game down so that my video cards can cool down. This is me, but my kids say the same thing, they would rather take turns playing on the water cooled system, then play on the air cooled system, it has fewer issues playing games.
 
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thequn

thequn

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Not arguing water vs air that is ridiculous. Water always wins. lol only that it was cheaper and more efficient even more powerful to just get a second 7950 and get water blocks them, them then buying two 580s hydro copper or not.
 
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manofchalk

manofchalk

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May 11, 2012
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As long as its the same model card, you can mix and match brands all you want. Only thing at might cause issues is that one could overclock further than the other, so if you run them at that frequency you will have issues as the weaker card cant hold that stably. If you do everything proper, you should be fine.

In regards to water-block compatibility, if they both use a reference PCB than underneath the coolers they will be identical. But considering that your getting 4GB cards (I question why, a 680 is hardly an upgrade from a 7950) I don't think that they will be reference design. You may have to go for Universal blocks.

My advice on what to do, either go with Thequn's suggestion and just get another 7950. Or use the budget for dual 4GB 680's to get a 780 and a water-block.
 
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Phat Cawks

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Jun 22, 2013
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Thank guys for all your input I'll go for another 7950 instead, yeah I am still new to water cooling. I've been reading a bunch of stuff online but I couldn't really find the answer about two different types of pcb's and how they would affect the alignment for the the fittings. Anyways, I appreciate all the suggestions and input.
 
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