GTX 780 SLI overclock on water cool

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Tony T23

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so I have a pair of 780's in SLI right now and I'm trying to decide if its worth doing a water loop so I can overclock them. right now they will hit around 85c with stock speeds, so I cannot do an overclock on them. I did manage 150MHZ OC with an air conditioner blowing into the case, although its obviously not practical to use that method.

basically my question is whether or not it worth spending the money on a water setup just for maybe 200MHZ? The 780's are great, but against the newest games they just are not quite strong enough for running maxed out. I think a decent OC would help them out a lot, but I just don't know if it would be worth it.

whats your opinion?

system specs:
MSI X99s gaming 9 motherboard
Haswell-e 5930k CPU (overclocked to 4.5ghz with 240mm water cool)
16 GB G.SKILL DDR4
2x EVGA 780 SC
 

toolmaker_03

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well I do have 2 X GTX580's that I have overclocked, stock speed is 772Mhz, and there clocked to 850Mhz, with the water cooling they run at load as high as 49C, I could, and have, clocked them further with the water cooling setup I have, all the way to 930Mhz, but that is with 3 X 360mm radiators on the setup, and they run at 73C at load, with a 930Mhz clock on them, and to me that is too hot. but if your already running the GTX780's at 85C and don't mind them getting that hot, then I would say that a good water cooling system will get you the performance that you are looking for. but, yes, your still only looking at a about a 200Mhz overclock on those GTX780's, it is possible on those GPU's, and to me, that is a really good overclock for video cards.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2767231/serial-loop-parallel-loop.html

here is a test setup I did with only two 360mm radiators.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/274855-29-experimental-radiator-build

at the end of this log you can see the full build I did with all three 360mm radiators.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2902237/tec-build-log-start.html

and this is what I am working on now, so that I can clock my hardware further, as I don't like my hardware to run over 50C at load. well I hope this helps with your decision to go to water cooling, let me know what you decide. thanks.

 
Strictly for a performance basis, it wouldn't be worth the cost. The price of full-cover blocks for the cards, plus rads, pump, tubing, ect. would cost more than a new card. A single upcoming GTX 1070 would be faster than your 780s even OCed for much lower price. Two blocks alone would be $250 easily, let alone the rest. To sum up, yes you could gain some performance and much lower noise/temps, but if your after performance only, I think your money would be better spent on a new GPU.
 

toolmaker_03

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that is true, but it's not like someone who has already built a $4000 PC system, is going to just stop building high end systems. water cooling is a upgrade for high end systems, and can be transferred from one system to the next. to me it seemed like he was wanting to get into overclocking the hardware to extend the life of the hardware, or another way of putting it, would be to have the older hardware, preforming at the same performance levels, as the newer hardware.

that is what I am doing with my TEC build, by clocking my 3930K to 5Ghz, and my two GTX580's to 930Mhz, I will be at the same performance level as a 5930K and two GTX980's at stock speeds.

 


Hi Tony, Welcome to Toms Hardware! :)

I see in your specs you're already water cooling your CPU, is it cooled by a 240 kit, or an all in one style cooler?

Your GTX 780 SCs in SLI probably out perform my GTX Titan, so I'm kinda curious as to why you need to overclock them as my Titan pretty much plays anything I throw at it with very high settings?

Personally I don't think the expense will justify the performance increase as one negative of even running SLI is not all games perform well in SLI, and one driver release may be excellent and the next driver release total crap, that's the main reason I opted for the Titan, to run a single card.

I previously had 2 580GTX water cooled and clocked as far as I could push them and the Titan stomped their combined performance in the dirt.

The main reason I am sharing this with you is the GTX10 is being released in a couple of weeks, the first will be the GTX1080, if it is as fantastic as they're claiming you may regret spending the money on water cooling, I would just wait and see what happens with the new released graphics cards, just saying.

 
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