Palit Group, a specialized GPU manufacturer and one of Nvidia's biggest AIB partners, just previewed a hybrid GPU cooler on social media. The company shared a 12-second clip of a Game Rock Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card that has triple cooling fans and a water block attached. The clip thus seemingly shows a video card that uses a hybrid water and air cooling solution to keep its temperatures down.
While we don't have much information about the GPU yet, Palit's Game Rock GPU line often consists of performance cards, with the 4070 Ti and more powerful cards in the family. GPUs from the higher end of the spectrum usually draw more power and often run hotter, so we would expect RTX 4080 (Super) and RTX 4090 cards from Palit to have this dual cooling solution as an option.
If graphics cards don't have adequate cooling, they can soon hit thermal limits, which in turn limits their performance - not nice. However, if you keep a GPU's temperature low enough, you can maintain high boost clock speeds, or even achieve overclocking records. Palit could also be developing this hybrid cooling solution in preparation for the upcoming RTX 5000 series GPUs we expect to arrive this year.
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Palit isn't the first company to produce a hybrid cooling solution for a GPU. Asus launched a 3080 Ti that used a similar system in 2021, and even EVGA offered a hybrid-cooled RTX 2080 Super back in 2020. You could even get a third-party hybrid GPU cooler from Arctic way back in 2015 if you wanted to replace the stock cooler on your video card.
Nevertheless, this teaser is the first time that Palit will try this hybrid setup for its GPUs. But while using both air and water cooling will likely increase the performance of any graphics card, the question remains whether the larger space that the video card will take up will allow it to fit in your case, plus the additional cost you will have to pay, will make it worthwhile.
We will know more about this new hybrid GPU at Computex 2024. However, we do not recommend buying the card right at launch — it's better to wait for reviews and real-world performance numbers before purchasing. That way, you're sure you're getting one of the best graphics cards and the hybrid cooling solution is worth paying a premium for.
