MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Sea Hawk With 240mm Radiator
MSI's GeForce RTX 3080/3090 Sea Hawk cards are cooled by a special-built Asetek LCS.
There are a number of GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards with a hybrid all-in-one liquid cooling system on the market today (well, kind of). Many of these products use custom designs, but their cooling systems are mostly standard, tailored for a particular printed circuit board (PCB). MSI decided to team up with Asetek to design a custom cooling system for its GeForce RTX 30 Sea Hawk graphics cards that the company introduced at CES, and we spoke with MSI about the new cards on our Tom's Hardware Live CES stream.
MSI's GeForce RTX 30-series Sea Hawk graphics cards based on Nvidia's GA102 GPU announced at CES will use a proprietary PCB design as well as an all-new hybrid closed-loop cooler developed by MSI and Asetek. So far, MSI has only said that the LCS will be used exclusively on the GeForce RTX 3080 Sea Hawk and the RTX 3090 Sea Hawk graphics cards, but something similar could be adopted for other products.
The custom hybrid liquid cooling system uses a special copper cold plate with micro fins that covers not only the GPU, but also GDDR6X memory (albeit using thermal pads), which could help with VRAM overclocking. The copper base is equipped with Asetek's low-profile pump that circulates warm liquid back to the 240mm radiator with two MSI Torx 4.0 120-mm fans. The third fan — which is located on the graphics card itself — helps to cool down the board's voltage regulating modules (VRMs) to further improve overclocking potential of the product.
All the fans support MSI's Zero Frozr technology and stop when the GPU is under light load and its temperature is low. Meanwhile, even when the fans are idling, the pump keeps operating, whicking the heat away from the graphics processor. In addition, the custom LCS has a backplate that strengthens the PCB and improves design of the graphics card.
MSI has not announced the pricing and availability timeframe of its GeForce RTX 30-series Sea Hawk graphics cards, which is not particularly surprising given scarce supply of Nvidia's latest Ampere GPUs and overpriced graphics boards. We expect them relatively soon (within a few months), but customs and shipping are also a factor.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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Phaaze88 They're not actually going to keep that fugly 'Cooled by Asetek' badge in the middle of it, right?Reply -
DSzymborski I have to admit abhor GPUs with built-in hybrid cooling. As if GPUs need an additional source of catastrophic failure that's difficult to repair or replace in a meaningful way.Reply -
Phaaze88 Reply
True. It is very anti-consumer.DSzymborski said:I have to admit abhor GPUs with built-in hybrid cooling. As if GPUs need an additional source of catastrophic failure that's difficult to repair or replace in a meaningful way.
If there were any DIY options for Ampere, I'd totally jump on it.
EVGA, at least, appears to have done it right: https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=400-HY-1988-B1That's an Asetek cooler on it, so it wouldn't be too hard to replace it if it died... though that shroud does present some problems, namely with that low profile pump cap. Now that would be a problem.
Thanks to your post, I was reminded of Alphacool once again. Their Eiswolf line covers gpu hybrid cooling, and I found out that they're launching RTX 30 compatible kits next month.
I could drop out of EVGA's queue, try and get my hands on a FE 3080, and go from there... -
Gurg "given scarce supply of Nvidia's latest Ampere GPUs and overpriced graphics boards."Reply
AMD's top GPUs aren't scarce and overpriced? Though maybe I could be wrong as I haven't seen any listed in inventory at local stores for sale in a long time.
At least a limited number of Nvidia 's new GPUs show up generally once a week at local stores. They may be costly, but they sell out by the end of the day so how can anyone claim they are overpriced for the market? The only one that lingered a couple of days was a 3090 built for water cooling.