EVGA's Upcoming 980 Ti K|NGP|N Heavy With Copper

By Kevin Carbotte
published

One of the world's most formidable overclockers, K|NGP|N, has been partnering with EVGA for some time now to bring products to market that are an overclocker's dream. The first images of the upcoming GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N have been revealed on the kingpincooling forums, by K|NGP|N himself. 

No details have been revealed about the upcoming graphics card, but from the images we know a few things already. The K|NGP|N edition GTX 980 Ti is built on a custom PCB (no surprise here -- they always are) that features three PCI-E power connectors, two 8-pin and one 6-pin.

From the images, it looks as though this card will have some significant weight to it. Not only does it have six large copper heat pipes (that appear to be possibly 8 mm pipes), but the heat sink fins are actually made of copper as well. Copper has better heat dissipation properties, which is why it is used for heat pipes, but it is also considerably heavier than aluminum, which is what you'd traditionally use for a heatsink.

The images clearly show that the latest edition to EVGA K|NGP|N lineup retains the memory/MOSFET cooling plates that the previous K|NGP|N GTX 980 offered. These plates are meant to help transfer heat from the memory chips directly to the heatsink.

EVGA has not released pricing, nor the release date of the GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JackNaylorPE
    That's a lotta money if you later go with water. Hopefully this, and / or the Lightning, will show more of an improvement over the more mundane non-reference cards that we saw with 7xx series.
    Reply
  • Gam3r01
    That's a lot of copper to have invested in a card most users tend to water/LN2 cool.
    Who knows, maybe it will be worth it on air with that investment though.
    Reply
  • JackNaylorPE
    That was the disappointment for many last time around. With nVidia's physical and legal restrictions on what 3rd party vendors are permitted to do, the high end cards are having difficulty distancing themselves from the more pedestrian Gigabyte G1's and MSI Gaming cards.

    Good idea to put in a case w/ a PSU shroud which you can use as a base for a post to hold up with right side of the card(s)
    Reply
  • Gam3r01
    If I remember correctly from school, copper is ~3.something times denser than aluminum? Im interested to see how that card will handle the weight.
    Reply
  • JackNaylorPE
    http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/metal-alloys-densities-d_50.html

    Aluminum 2712
    Copper 8940
    Reply
  • soldier44
    My next card for 4K gaming.
    Reply
  • junkeymonkey
    http://forums.evga.com/980-Ti-Kingpin-m2342319-p7.aspx

    looks like its money well spent -lol
    Reply
  • dgingeri
    I'm really liking my 980 Ti ACX+ SC+, but adding that copper is just sexy. I love the look of copper.
    Reply
  • JackNaylorPE
    16245104 said:
    My next card for 4K gaming.

    Next 2 cards I presume ..... if ya want 60 fps at 4k, gonna need SLI. Currently the reference Ti gives us ...

    BF4 ~ 38 fps
    Crysis 3 ~ 27 fps
    Dead Rising ~ 26 fps
    Dragon Age ~ 40 fps
    FC4 ~ 35 fps
    GTV ~ 42 fps
    MetroLL ~ 37 fps
    Ryse ~ 40 fps
    SoM ~ 50 fps
    TR ~ 50.3 fps
    Watch Dogs ~ 42 fps

    I'd expect the Kingpin to get 30+% above those as the Ti is an extremely overclockable design.

    Card strength aside, I don't see 4k's adoption rate picking up until Display Port 1.3 arrives and we can get past double digit refresh rates.
    Reply
  • junkeymonkey
    reading the evga thread on it I linked there guys don't seem impressed - just like the classified thread.. ho hum..

    http://forums.evga.com/GTX-980-TI-Classified-m2344369.aspx

    you spend big bucks on a card the will require you to spend more on cooling then risk a bios hack to ''try/hope '' to get it to do something -- when the evga guys aint impressed what else is there to say

    like I said before the zotac is 1253 out of the box for one price ready to go ??

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500379
    Reply