GTX 680 Watercooled Rigs Post your Max OC & Pics

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Lord_Exodia

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Thinking about finally going all in on my rig and buying a full watercooling setup. I'm currently fine tuning my cards overclock to see how far I can take them on the stock coolers.

I'm actually starting this thread to call forward anyone who has GTX 680/s watercooled and overclocked to find out how the water cooling has helped your overclocking and also to welcome you to post pics because Hardware that beautiful is meant to be shown!! :D

The main reason for this thread, however is because I am not a noise guy. I could care less about fan noise, however I've always wanted to build my own water cooled box, however, I will do that if it will help me overclock better. If all I'm getting is less temps then to be honest I think I'll skip the $500 investment. So who better to tell me than my fellow forum members who have done this.

Again, please feel free to post, benchmark results, overclocking utiliteis used and settings, your gpu-z validating your overclock etc.. etc...
 
Well, wouldn't lower temps help you with overclocking in this case since these GPUs automatically down- or up-clock wih one of the variables that affect that being heat?

Plus, those normal fans that you bolt onto a radiator are standard 120mm or 140mm -- you can run them til they wear out and just buy a new one. The stock blower HSF assembly isn't really something you can readily order, so I would, if I had the time/money/guts, turn my 680s into watercooled cards to reduce the noise, get lower temps, and avoid using the stock HSF assembly.


Little nitpick: could not care less/couldn't care less.

Sorry I don't have anything beyond that to add.
 
sonsonate said:
Well, wouldn't lower temps help you with overclocking in this case since these GPUs automatically down- or up-clock wih one of the variables that affect that being heat?
Click to expand...

To answer that, Yes theoretically. However from my experience overclocking these cards heat doesn't seem to be my bottleneck. I'm still tweaking but it seems like voltage is holding back the cards more than anything. Both my cards do over 1200mhz @ 70c and that's with fans on auto. The difference between my top overclocker of my 2 cards and the bottom isn't temp at all. They both reach ~ 70c but one can go higher than the other. That's probably simply the way the gpu's turned out in the end.

Since I'm not sure of this I wanted to hear from someone who ran then on air and switched to water cooling and noted a difference in their overclocking results.

I'm surprised after checking back in on this thread, nearly 24 hours later and noone has posted water cooling pics/info on this thread. I thought this was the [H] :p

Cmon People :)
 
I don't see any reason to watercool these until they release revisions that allow voltage control. My first GPU does 1316MHz on air and the second does 1303MHz. With the stock fans on a custom profile which ramps to 85% at 65C and adaptive vsync on I can keep temps below 72-73C and I can't hear the fans over the 1800rpm Typhoon fans on my radiator. I actually bought Arctic Cooling TT kits for them but I don't even think that's worth installing.


My offsets are +180/+300 to reach these speeds.
 
There are always two things that keep you from overclocking higher.

1.) Heat
2.) Electron Migration

You can lower the heat and gain slightly higher clocks, but unless it's below -50C, you'll like not get it ANY higher clocked. Just the way it works.

If they load at 70C, watercooling is just there to look nice.

Kind of like my HR-03 on my 8800 GTS 512s three years back. They look cool, they keep temps below 65C, but they didn't let me overclock any bit higher.
 
For the cost of full cover blocks and the hardware to watercool, you could just save a bit more and buy a 3rd 680. If you don't have a radiator and pump/reservoir already you're looking at around $400 minimum to do it right and you won't see any real world improvement.
 
Rizen said:
For the cost of full cover blocks and the hardware to watercool, you could just save a bit more and buy a 3rd 680. If you don't have a radiator and pump/reservoir already you're looking at around $400 minimum to do it right and you won't see any real world improvement.
Click to expand...

Yep... for performance purposes, WC'ing is useless when it comes to $/fps.

However! When it comes to cooling performance and noise, that's another story. You can get a tri-SLI rig running voltage flat out, with almost no audible noise.
 
Looks like I have once card that can overclock like it's nobody's business and one that can barely overclock.

Card 1 does 1332mhz and possibly slightly more, card 2 does 1232 and barely. Looks like I have more tweaking to do on card 2 in the downshifting way. I've gotten some crashes, hell I've gotten a crash at stock speeds on that card. It may go back to newegg as I have had some weird issues with it. At one time my system didn't even power up with it in the slot. I had to take it out and reseat it 2x for it to come back on which is strange behavior.. I'ts been fine since then but I have some more testing to do on that card.

My Vram is around 6320 which is okay. I ran them in SLi at 1232/6320 and got a crash in BF3 single player operation sword breaker and had to quit for the night.

I agree with Rizen in that it seems that there is no sense watercooling to bring more performance as the voltage on these cards seems to be capped at a max 1.175. Who knows maybe Nibittor may help when it's updated to support Kepler. My hopes for that are very low as it seems examining the components that these cards aren't built to increase voltage and even doing a pencil mod (hard mod) doesn't seem likely to help.

I'm using +130 on my cards for the core and +175 on the memory (stock clocked cards) and +132 for power. I left voltage at default and have a custom fan curve that keep the cards at 65-70c now.

Still if anyone has some pics and a story to share on your watercooling build please post here. I'd love to see some nice Hardware Pron :D
 
I put together a watercooling setup for my GTX 480 SLi and I didn't do it to keep them cool or overclock ... I did it to avoid the noisy ass hell fan.

I even managed to achieve 950Mhz core speed on both which is pretty amazing for the fusion reactors known as the GTX 480's.

With my watercooling setup it sounds like a soft breeze during heavy loads and with the fan it sounded like a hair salon packed...

That said I look forward to watercooling my dual GTX 670's.
 
Just watercooled my zotecs gtx 680, before would not pass 1295 ( would pass furmark but crash in heaven 6/26) now i can get stable at 1305 furmark, 3dmark11 and heaven does not crash anymore!temps idle at 35c and load 52c on furmark ambient 24c.

Is not much but its good enough for me!

I am using a bios moded: evga 1241/1750/1280! I am working on a bios with no boost, 1290 or 1300/1750.
 
Rizen said:
I don't see any reason to watercool these until they release revisions that allow voltage control. My first GPU does 1316MHz on air and the second does 1303MHz. With the stock fans on a custom profile which ramps to 85% at 65C and adaptive vsync on I can keep temps below 72-73C and I can't hear the fans over the 1800rpm Typhoon fans on my radiator. I actually bought Arctic Cooling TT kits for them but I don't even think that's worth installing.


My offsets are +180/+300 to reach these speeds.
Click to expand...

i must have a dud of an oc'er because i can only do 1250 max on mine. also when the fans ramp up they're definately audible over my sanyos on the kuhler 920
 
gigatexal said:
i must have a dud of an oc'er because i can only do 1250 max on mine. also when the fans ramp up they're definately audible over my sanyos on the kuhler 920
Click to expand...
No, yours are normal overclockers. Mine are just unusually strong.
 
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