ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 1080 Ti Platinum Edition Part 1 @ [H]

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ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 1080 Ti Platinum Edition Part 1 - Air cooling? Liquid Cooling? How about both, the ASUS ROG Poseidon GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Platinum Edition hybrid video card can run them both. In Part 1 of our evaluation we will test the video card on "air cooling" and overclock it as high as possible. In Part 2, we pump liquid through its veins and compare overclocks.
 
When you mention "Gaming Mode" and "OC Mode", I did a double take at the similar terms used to Gigabyte in their Aorus Graphics Engine software as there are 4 settings in there, the aforementioned two and an additional two of "Silent Mode" and "User Mode". Interesting standardization even if unintentional.
 
Looking forward to the second part using water cooling with air cooling. One of these, with 4K HDR Gsync monitor would be rather nice:
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-g-sync-hdr-35-inch-curved-monitor

Will HardOCP review any of the HDR upcoming monitors - gaming experience from using HDR10?

Review was interesting and fun to read, did not note anything about how loud or not this card is with the air cooling especially when at 100% (may have missed it). Card looks to be really geared more towards using a custom loop anyways with air cooling more as a backup. I can't see buying this card unless I was going to water cool it which may make this a very quiet combination with great OCs - can't wait now for the conclusion.
 
Thanks for the review. Can't wait to see part 2.

Your upper overclock speeds almost exactly mirror what I did w/ my Strix- 1987,2025,2038. Really makes me wonder if the NV firmware/limiters are set to some kind of speed profile. With mine, though, I only increased the fan to 70%, +499mhz on the Vram(MSI shows it at 6003Mhz), and +60mhz on the clock. I didn't adjust the power at all. It holds those clocks and maintains 50-60c during many hours of gaming. Similar performance gains in most games ~5-10fps vs stock speeds.
 
This is turning out to be a pretty interesting review. Seeing that you just reviewed an MSI 1080TI that was an air cooled card, it will be nice to see the MAX OC of the MSI card compared to the MAX OC of the ASUS Poseidon card. Factoring in noise and overall maximum performance, (and considering the inconvenience of doing the water) which will be the better overall card?
 
Con you please confirm the material of the water channel? Asus' product page neglects to mention it in all their marketing BS.
Brent has left on vacation and the card is in his office. Let me see if I can get ASUS to answer.
 
Why on earth would you buy this at $819 when for $799 you can get the MSI Seahawk WITH the water cooling already installed?
 
Why on earth would you buy this at $819 when for $799 you can get the MSI Seahawk WITH the water cooling already installed?
Because some folks do not want AIO cooling if they already have a huge ass custom loop built. Why would you want to put an AIO in a high dollar custom liquid system? That said, the MSI Seahawk is really cool.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137126

The 1080 for $600 is nice with AIO too. https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GeForce-GTX-1080-HAWK/dp/B01H263V0U/?tag=hardfocom-20
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Looking forward to the second part using water cooling with air cooling. One of these, with 4K HDR Gsync monitor would be rather nice:
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-g-sync-hdr-35-inch-curved-monitor

Will HardOCP review any of the HDR upcoming monitors - gaming experience from using HDR10?

Review was interesting and fun to read, did not note anything about how loud or not this card is with the air cooling especially when at 100% (may have missed it). Card looks to be really geared more towards using a custom loop anyways with air cooling more as a backup. I can't see buying this card unless I was going to water cool it which may make this a very quiet combination with great OCs - can't wait now for the conclusion.
At the bottom of page 11:
In terms of fan noise though, the fans are very quiet, even at 100%. We were surprised how quiet they were at full RPMs.

I don't remember reviews of the previous Poseidon cards, so forgive me if this was covered. But could the hybrid block on the die be causing lower thermal dissipation than a heatsink with direct contact would be achieving? Even though you can safely operate and enjoy this card in air mode exclusively I think the intent is to run the card with water flowing through it and that is what people spending the money on this would do. I know this is a complete review and I appreciate all angles being covered, though.
Is that cooling loop on the ROG poseidon going over that copper heat plate or going through it? I cant tell on the pictures, I may be looking at it wrong.

Also, it looks like they are using old TITAN PCB with how they just left a VRAM chip off of it, lol.
Looks like the loop is going over the heat plate, not through it.

I think the 1080 Ti FE does use the Titan X PCB. And the VRAM chips being used are 8Gb, so one would naturally be missing.
 
What happened to to old format of scrolling through the pages? Now I can't jump back and forth. I have to click then scroll down then click then scroll down. Very inefficient.
 
What happened to to old format of scrolling through the pages? Now I can't jump back and forth. I have to click then scroll down then click then scroll down. Very inefficient.
The pulldown is on the top-right of the page, so it's just a click of the home button away.
 
What happened to to old format of scrolling through the pages? Now I can't jump back and forth. I have to click then scroll down then click then scroll down. Very inefficient.
Pull down menu at the top. Page advance menu at the bottom. What exactly do you want?
 
I have been investigating custom loop cooling...but am concerned about how you handle SLI...wouldnt you need 2 separate loops? Otherwise the heat from one card will be transferred to the 2nd...unless I am missing something.
You are missing quite a lot, and need to investigate more. [H] has a liquid cooling section, but so does XS. Martin's Liquid Lab is also worth a read.

To oversimplify, a water cooling loop will reach a steady state at any given load, where the temperature of the water is essentially constant, and is based on the total heat being added to the loop and the total heat being removed from the loop. As long as you have enough radiator surface area and airflow across it to handle the heat from the blocks in your loop, and as long as your flow rate is...well...existent (ideally ~1gpm), your loop will work just fine.

You'll see people with multiple loops in a system, but it's form over function.

If you have two pumps, two (or more) radiators, a cpu block and two gpu blocks (or more), the best performing and most reliable solution is going to be to put the GPU blocks in parallel, and then put the parallel GPU blocks in series with everything else.
 
You are missing quite a lot, and need to investigate more. [H] has a liquid cooling section, but so does XS. Martin's Liquid Lab is also worth a read.

To oversimplify, a water cooling loop will reach a steady state at any given load, where the temperature of the water is essentially constant, and is based on the total heat being added to the loop and the total heat being removed from the loop. As long as you have enough radiator surface area and airflow across it to handle the heat from the blocks in your loop, and as long as your flow rate is...well...existent (ideally ~1gpm), your loop will work just fine.

You'll see people with multiple loops in a system, but it's form over function.

If you have two pumps, two (or more) radiators, a cpu block and two gpu blocks (or more), the best performing and most reliable solution is going to be to put the GPU blocks in parallel, and then put the parallel GPU blocks in series with everything else.

Thank you! I HAVE been reading about water cooling loops, but almost every build I read about is only using a SINGLE GPU! I haven't seen much talk at all about SLI or 3 way systems. I am in early planning stages for a build that will probably happen in 6-8 months, and I plan on spending more than I should! :) Gaming and entertainment will by my main focus, and I am going for stable, quiet, and eye-catching. Cost is less of a factor (but I work for a living, it's not completely irrelevant!)

What I am contemplating right now is a ThreadRipper or i9 CPU (depending on benchmarks/price, I am thinking the additional PCI lanes might give AMD the edge here, but I want to see real world benchmarks before making the call), dual GTX1080Ti cards (or better, if AMD or Nvidia release something better), a 3rd dedicated card for PhysX (not sure if I should get another 1080ti or if something cheaper/less expensive/less hot will work fine for that). Fast RAM (without having to configure/test/configure for 20 hours to get stable), an M.2 Samsung Pro 960 SSD (or two), and I am still debating if I want a 4k monitor (or monitors) or if I should go 1080p or 1440p and go for high frame rates.

I WAS considering going with AIO cooling for the CPU AND the two graphics cards...but now I think I might reconsider a custom loop...it would make things a LOT easier and would open up more options for me as well as looking pretty damn impressive.
 
Thank you! I HAVE been reading about water cooling loops, but almost every build I read about is only using a SINGLE GPU! I haven't seen much talk at all about SLI or 3 way systems. I am in early planning stages for a build that will probably happen in 6-8 months, and I plan on spending more than I should! :) Gaming and entertainment will by my main focus, and I am going for stable, quiet, and eye-catching. Cost is less of a factor (but I work for a living, it's not completely irrelevant!).

Well like nicepants42 said, just dont "chain" the GPUs together on the same path. (Like a series circuit)

If you were doing more than 2 GPUs though I would dedicate a radiator to just the GPUs and one to the CPU. It would probably pay to just do that with just two GPUs anyway.
 
Thank you! I HAVE been reading about water cooling loops, but almost every build I read about is only using a SINGLE GPU! I haven't seen much talk at all about SLI or 3 way systems. I am in early planning stages for a build that will probably happen in 6-8 months, and I plan on spending more than I should! :) Gaming and entertainment will by my main focus, and I am going for stable, quiet, and eye-catching. Cost is less of a factor (but I work for a living, it's not completely irrelevant!)

What I am contemplating right now is a ThreadRipper or i9 CPU (depending on benchmarks/price, I am thinking the additional PCI lanes might give AMD the edge here, but I want to see real world benchmarks before making the call), dual GTX1080Ti cards (or better, if AMD or Nvidia release something better), a 3rd dedicated card for PhysX (not sure if I should get another 1080ti or if something cheaper/less expensive/less hot will work fine for that). Fast RAM (without having to configure/test/configure for 20 hours to get stable), an M.2 Samsung Pro 960 SSD (or two), and I am still debating if I want a 4k monitor (or monitors) or if I should go 1080p or 1440p and go for high frame rates.

I WAS considering going with AIO cooling for the CPU AND the two graphics cards...but now I think I might reconsider a custom loop...it would make things a LOT easier and would open up more options for me as well as looking pretty damn impressive.

All for building beasts to conquering the universe but I thought I'd share some of my experiences thus far as they slightly coincide with your goals. My signature build was put together with many of the same goals. The 4930k has 40 lanes.

1. PCIe lanes-I used to think we were getting close to the ceiling for gaming w/ 2.0 or 3.0. Not even close. My 1080SLI rig @ 4096x2160 60hz barely taps 25% of the bus. I semi-regularly converse with someone on another forum who knows people doing film production/rendering it even then only drives really saturate it. We're thinking around 8k GPU's will start to max the 3.0 limits. My 1080ti in 2.0(x16) hits around 30% in 4k. I will say that SLI/CF isn't quite the headache everyone makes it out to be but honestly support really is decreasing drastically. If you got a TI and really had an amazing water cooled loop holding a stable 2.2-2.5 on the clock it would be really close to my 1080SLI which averages 50-70fps in 4k.
2. PhysX-I originally was using 2xG1 OC970's(x16 each!) and a EVGA SC780(x8 PhysX). It was awesome until NV stopped hardware acceleration. Metro's and Batman Arkham City got ~60 fps in 4k. AFAIK all newer games rely on CPU only now. Wish it wasn't true else I'd still do it.

Wishing you the best of luck though. Lot of cool tech on both sides of the fence these days.
 
All for building beasts to conquering the universe but I thought I'd share some of my experiences thus far as they slightly coincide with your goals. My signature build was put together with many of the same goals. The 4930k has 40 lanes.

1. PCIe lanes-I used to think we were getting close to the ceiling for gaming w/ 2.0 or 3.0. Not even close. My 1080SLI rig @ 4096x2160 60hz barely taps 25% of the bus. I semi-regularly converse with someone on another forum who knows people doing film production/rendering it even then only drives really saturate it. We're thinking around 8k GPU's will start to max the 3.0 limits. My 1080ti in 2.0(x16) hits around 30% in 4k. I will say that SLI/CF isn't quite the headache everyone makes it out to be but honestly support really is decreasing drastically. If you got a TI and really had an amazing water cooled loop holding a stable 2.2-2.5 on the clock it would be really close to my 1080SLI which averages 50-70fps in 4k.
2. PhysX-I originally was using 2xG1 OC970's(x16 each!) and a EVGA SC780(x8 PhysX). It was awesome until NV stopped hardware acceleration. Metro's and Batman Arkham City got ~60 fps in 4k. AFAIK all newer games rely on CPU only now. Wish it wasn't true else I'd still do it.

Wishing you the best of luck though. Lot of cool tech on both sides of the fence these days.

I didnt realize that NV stopped supporting hardware accelleration...thanks for the info on the bus speeds too...with all of the new marketing stuff flying everywhere its hard to really understand what is useful and what is marketing fluff. Sounds like I might just be better off with a Core i7 right now...still, it's not nearly as much fun if you arent on the bleeding edge! :)
 
jnemesh I totally agree on the cutting edge. If my current rigs weren't still holding their own I'd build another but as is I couldn't justify the costs. Definitely watch out for marketing hype. I still fall victim to it occasionally thanks to [H]ard and a few others it's really helped on my education. I truly can't say enough good things about the TI's though. If someone can seriously get one stable in the 2.2-2.5Ghz range I'm pretty sure it'd be a near solid 60fps ultra 4k experience. Maybe a little under but still close. I've read crazy things about De8uer or somebody like that using LN for something similar but that's totally unrealistic for most of us. I've tested mine at 4k and it's 35-55, not bad but I really don't like things under 50. At 1440p/Gsync its another story. Usually an average of 60 min w/ SMAA x4 or 90+ FXAA/SMAAx2 and everything else maxed. Whatever card you might end up with, just really got to give it the power it needs and keep it cool. Beginning with Pascal NV has put very strict limiters that I've seen consistently with both my 1080's and the TI. You can almost set a clock to 'em their so consistent.

When you do build that monster what I've heard is that some PCIe SSD drives can saturate the bus. Put a few in raid and they'll be hungry enough. Problem is, you need fast ram, low latency, a primo MOBO/chipset, and fast CPU to really take advantage of the speed. Cooling can also become an issue for them too. Otherwise, back to the hype on a box telling you 'capable of up to xxxx'. But honestly, for gaming that's way overkill. I've seen many writers/reviewers state that SSD raids don't provide any real world gains over single SSD performance. I can factually disagree(at least in regards to SATA III) but I will say it's minimal and not economical unless there's a good price point sale for 2 smaller drives vs. a single of larger. So my recommendation would really be 2 PCIe SSD's, one for OS, one big one for games. They'll eat up some of the lanes and be frightening fast.
 
I have been investigating custom loop cooling...but am concerned about how you handle SLI...wouldnt you need 2 separate loops? Otherwise the heat from one card will be transferred to the 2nd...unless I am missing something.

Shouldn't be an issue if your loop has enough coolant and good radiator(s) in it. Also the pump has to be good.
 
Thank you! I HAVE been reading about water cooling loops, but almost every build I read about is only using a SINGLE GPU! I haven't seen much talk at all about SLI or 3 way systems. I am in early planning stages for a build that will probably happen in 6-8 months, and I plan on spending more than I should! :) Gaming and entertainment will by my main focus, and I am going for stable, quiet, and eye-catching. Cost is less of a factor (but I work for a living, it's not completely irrelevant!)

What I am contemplating right now is a ThreadRipper or i9 CPU (depending on benchmarks/price, I am thinking the additional PCI lanes might give AMD the edge here, but I want to see real world benchmarks before making the call), dual GTX1080Ti cards (or better, if AMD or Nvidia release something better), a 3rd dedicated card for PhysX (not sure if I should get another 1080ti or if something cheaper/less expensive/less hot will work fine for that). Fast RAM (without having to configure/test/configure for 20 hours to get stable), an M.2 Samsung Pro 960 SSD (or two), and I am still debating if I want a 4k monitor (or monitors) or if I should go 1080p or 1440p and go for high frame rates.

I WAS considering going with AIO cooling for the CPU AND the two graphics cards...but now I think I might reconsider a custom loop...it would make things a LOT easier and would open up more options for me as well as looking pretty damn impressive.


I'm totally in your shoes, the only difference is that I've already got a custom loop so I'm definitely going down that route. (Which by the way I highly recommend and it's easier than you might think, as long as you plan it out right)

GFX cards for me -- it's just a case of whether to buy a 1080ti with a pre-installed water block or do it myself with an FE card and an EK block. I like the look of the Poseidon as it allows me to err.. 'upgrade' my wife's PC, once the 1080ti is obsolete. Unless somehow the Vega RX pulls something out of the blue, which is looking unlikely.

My current conundrum is whether to go Intel i9 or Threadripper on the CPUs. I was dead set on getting an 8 core i9, but now I'm not so sure after learning that Intel are intentionally gimping the pci-e lanes and forcing you to buy the 1k$ ten core just to "unlock" 44 lanes - the whole point for me with X299 is the pci-e lanes, otherwise what's the point. It's pissing me off to the point that I feel guilty I'm even considering to spend money on X299 and basically condone this shitty anti-consumer behaviour. Anyway I've decided to at least wait for Threadripper to release and see if it does offer competitive single core - which I suspect it won't, but the price is likely going to be super competitive which will leave me with a very hard choice. I will probably still end up getting the i9 if they drop prices to counter Threadripper. The thing is that the price for that Intel 10-core chip would have been closer to $2k if it hand't been for a competitive AMD - peeves me off even more.

Anyway, CPU aside I'm also considering whether to go SLI or not. I've always wanted to go SLI, but everytime I upgrade, the value choice of buying the fastest single card there is and consider buying a duplicate later on to SLI, wins out. By the time I want to upgrade next, 2x generations have passed and there's absolutely no point in me getting another 780 OC. This time though I'm definitely waiting for the new 120Hz 1440p curved Ultrawides, so there is reason here for me to go SLI. I'm just worried about future compatibility and support.
 
Really anxious to see part 2. I've had my Poseidon for a week now and I'm not happy with it. I was hitting 90C with air and was shocked. I figured it'd be much better when I put it under water....it wasn't. I was still hitting 90C instantly upon launching Furmark, or just about anything else.

I've since put it in a new build, and it's improved slightly. I am now capping out at 83C. At least it doesn't throttle now, but there's no way this can be right.

It's cooled on it's on loop with a 480 rad. Asus support hasn't been helpful at all. I requested an RMA from Newegg and will likely send it back on Monday but I'm really curious to see how others have fared with this card, and am especially curious to see part 2 of the review.
 
Really anxious to see part 2. I've had my Poseidon for a week now and I'm not happy with it. I was hitting 90C with air and was shocked. I figured it'd be much better when I put it under water....it wasn't. I was still hitting 90C instantly upon launching Furmark, or just about anything else.

I've since put it in a new build, and it's improved slightly. I am now capping out at 83C. At least it doesn't throttle now, but there's no way this can be right.

It's cooled on it's on loop with a 480 rad. Asus support hasn't been helpful at all. I requested an RMA from Newegg and will likely send it back on Monday but I'm really curious to see how others have fared with this card, and am especially curious to see part 2 of the review.
Don't use Furmark........its load is far beyond realistic.
 
At stock clocks and fan profiles we were bumping 78c during gaming, so low 80s depending on your setup does not sound wrong.
 
Thanks for the update, I appreciate it. I look forward to reading part 2 of the review.
 
Really anxious to see part 2. I've had my Poseidon for a week now and I'm not happy with it. I was hitting 90C with air and was shocked. I figured it'd be much better when I put it under water....it wasn't. I was still hitting 90C instantly upon launching Furmark, or just about anything else.

I've since put it in a new build, and it's improved slightly. I am now capping out at 83C. At least it doesn't throttle now, but there's no way this can be right.

It's cooled on it's on loop with a 480 rad. Asus support hasn't been helpful at all. I requested an RMA from Newegg and will likely send it back on Monday but I'm really curious to see how others have fared with this card, and am especially curious to see part 2 of the review.
That doesn't sound right. If I were to guess, you don't have any liquid circulating through the cooling plate on the card. I would check to make sure everything is hooked up correctly and is working, and go back and see if this card has any special instructions for hooking it up to a loop.
 
I have the block set up with the liquid entering the top left port with the outlet being the lower right port. The tubing is clear, and I can see it flowing through the tube. At idle the temps are 39C. I just unplugged the pump and the temp steadily rose from 39 until it hit 50 (at which point the fans kick in) and flatlines at 57. I ran something intensive to get the temps up (hit 90), turned off the app and the temp falls rapidly back down to 57. When I turn the pumps back on the temps rapidly fall back to 39. Running that same app while the pump is going gets me to 81. Shutting it down brings me back to 39 in a hurry.

Just comparing this to a friend's rig which is quite similar other than his video card (1080ti Strix) and he's way under me in terms of temp. Seems odd to me that his setup on air can be that much better than my water.

I'm stumped.
 
I have the block set up with the liquid entering the top left port with the outlet being the lower right port. The tubing is clear, and I can see it flowing through the tube. At idle the temps are 39C. I just unplugged the pump and the temp steadily rose from 39 until it hit 50 (at which point the fans kick in) and flatlines at 57. I ran something intensive to get the temps up (hit 90), turned off the app and the temp falls rapidly back down to 57. When I turn the pumps back on the temps rapidly fall back to 39. Running that same app while the pump is going gets me to 81. Shutting it down brings me back to 39 in a hurry.

Just comparing this to a friend's rig which is quite similar other than his video card (1080ti Strix) and he's way under me in terms of temp. Seems odd to me that his setup on air can be that much better than my water.

I'm stumped.
OH, I mis-read, I thought you were still on air and just planning to go to water. 80s on water does not sound correct to me under real-world gaming.
 
Ahhhhhh ok, I feel MUCH better now that something is most definitely wrong. I wonder if the block isn't making good contact? I'm not about to open it up, I'll just RMA it.

Will part 2 of the review be up shortly?
Monday.
 
Monday, ok then. I was about to stroll down to Microcenter this AM, but I can wait through the weekend. Meantime I'm wondering...just as a thought exercise...what a WB fit onto a Lightning Z (with its LN2 bios/voltage tweak switch) might unleash. Any thoughts?
 
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block isn't making good contact
Ding.

You should definitely pull the block off, post pictures of the block base and the die prior to cleaning, re-seat the block with proper TIM, post your new temps here, and then maybe RMA it if it still sucks. Edit /s

Unless all that voids the warranty, in which case yea just RMA it. There's no reason to wait for part 2 of this review when your card sucks that badly. If Brent's card shows decent temps you RMA because yours doesn't. If Brent's card shows 80C while gaming under water then either you both have bad contact and both should either re-seat or RMA, or the card design itself is shit and literally all of them should be returned (I doubt it's that bad).

I'm kind of hoping that Brent documents re-seating this card regardless of the reason.
 
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Ding.

You should definitely pull the block off, post pictures of the block base and the die prior to cleaning, re-seat the block with proper TIM, post your new temps here, and then maybe RMA it if it still sucks.

Unless all that voids the warranty, in which case yea just RMA it. There's no reason to wait for part 2 of this review when your card sucks that badly. If Brent's card shows decent temps you RMA because yours doesn't. If Brent's card shows 80C while gaming under water then either you both have bad contact and both should either re-seat or RMA, or the card design itself is shit and literally all of them should be returned (I doubt it's that bad).

I'm kind of hoping that Brent documents re-seating this card regardless of the reason.
ASUS looks for any excuse to deny an RMA, so I would not throw money away by putting the die contact theory to the test. Besides, if it's still within 14 days of purchase I would just exchange it with the retailer and not go through the RMA headache.
 
jnemesh I totally agree on the cutting edge. If my current rigs weren't still holding their own I'd build another but as is I couldn't justify the costs. Definitely watch out for marketing hype. I still fall victim to it occasionally thanks to [H]ard and a few others it's really helped on my education. I truly can't say enough good things about the TI's though. If someone can seriously get one stable in the 2.2-2.5Ghz range I'm pretty sure it'd be a near solid 60fps ultra 4k experience. Maybe a little under but still close. I've read crazy things about De8uer or somebody like that using LN for something similar but that's totally unrealistic for most of us. I've tested mine at 4k and it's 35-55, not bad but I really don't like things under 50. At 1440p/Gsync its another story. Usually an average of 60 min w/ SMAA x4 or 90+ FXAA/SMAAx2 and everything else maxed. Whatever card you might end up with, just really got to give it the power it needs and keep it cool. Beginning with Pascal NV has put very strict limiters that I've seen consistently with both my 1080's and the TI. You can almost set a clock to 'em their so consistent.

When you do build that monster what I've heard is that some PCIe SSD drives can saturate the bus. Put a few in raid and they'll be hungry enough. Problem is, you need fast ram, low latency, a primo MOBO/chipset, and fast CPU to really take advantage of the speed. Cooling can also become an issue for them too. Otherwise, back to the hype on a box telling you 'capable of up to xxxx'. But honestly, for gaming that's way overkill. I've seen many writers/reviewers state that SSD raids don't provide any real world gains over single SSD performance. I can factually disagree(at least in regards to SATA III) but I will say it's minimal and not economical unless there's a good price point sale for 2 smaller drives vs. a single of larger. So my recommendation would really be 2 PCIe SSD's, one for OS, one big one for games. They'll eat up some of the lanes and be frightening fast.

I wasnt planning on SSD RAIDs, just a smaller single m.2 drive for the OS and a 2nd m.2 drive for storage (probably a 512GB and a 1TB)...and then MAYBE a 3rd M.2 for expansion later (when SSD prices drop!). And yes, I am planning on DDR4-3200 RAM (or better) in a Quad Channel setup (most likely 32GB to start) and I am looking at the X399 Gigabyte Auros Gaming 9 motherboard...or a similar board on X299 intel, depending on the benchmarks when ThreadRipper comes out. Right now I am leaning AMD though.

I am HOPING to keep my build around $3500, but if I need to stretch it to make sure I have top quality components, I will do so. Right now I am just gathering info and waiting to see what comes out in the next few months though, so I cant even begin to really calculate a final build.

Yeah, I know it's "overkill" right now to build such a system, but my idea here is to make something that will last me at LEAST 5 years without significant upgrades. I am shooting for a SOLID 60fps in 4k with HDR and all the bells and whistles enabled...and a single air cooled 1080Ti doesn't seem to be enough, so...off the deep end I go!
 
jnemesh I totally agree with your plan. If I needed to build something new I would do pretty much the exact same.

Well if you really don't mind the support issues of SLI then 1080TI SLI will definitely get a solid 60+ fps in 4k. My 1080SLI averages 50-70 w/ v-sync and everything maxed at 4096x2160 for games that support it. I recommend doing TI over regular 1080's because of the Vram size. At 4k high end games get hungry(the new motto is they use what you give 'em). I've seen many games at max using 5-8GB and when I tested my TI on 4k w/ ROTR maxed it went over 10. I strongly advise learning about SLI-bits and NV profile inspector. Here's a good site from Germany that has an amazing forum regarding such:

http://www.3dcenter.org/

I just started learning about them a year or so ago and its made a huge difference when either NV or game dev's aren't on the ball with good support. There's a few other sites but just google 'SLI Bits' whenever you have a game w/ issues and you might find a solution.

I understand not wanting to do the waiting game as there's so many unknowns with it. I'm pretty sure the next TI or whatever it may be called will be a true 4k card as this one got pretty close but who know when or what it will be.
 
Ding.

You should definitely pull the block off, post pictures of the block base and the die prior to cleaning, re-seat the block with proper TIM, post your new temps here, and then maybe RMA it if it still sucks. Edit /s

Unless all that voids the warranty, in which case yea just RMA it. There's no reason to wait for part 2 of this review when your card sucks that badly. If Brent's card shows decent temps you RMA because yours doesn't. If Brent's card shows 80C while gaming under water then either you both have bad contact and both should either re-seat or RMA, or the card design itself is shit and literally all of them should be returned (I doubt it's that bad).

I'm kind of hoping that Brent documents re-seating this card regardless of the reason.

It's already packed up and was dropped off at UPS this morning to send it back to Newegg. It's within their return window, and although curious to see if the block was making good contact it just wasn't worth the hassle (or risk) to satisfy that curiousity. I see part 2 is up now, and the temps they hit on the review are far superior to mine. Hopefully the replacement is fine.
 
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/07/10/asus_rog_poseidon_gtx_1080_ti_platinum_edition_part_2

ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 1080 Ti Platinum Edition - Part 2
It’s time to let the liquid flow and put the ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 1080 Ti Platinum Edition to the ultimate test. We will connect a Koolance Liquid Cooling System and test GPU frequency, gaming performance, and push the video card as hard as possible for its best overclock. Let’s find out what a little liquid can do for a GTX 1080 Ti.
 
RMAd the card and ordered an EVGA HydroCopper instead. I emailed Asus support for an update and was told "As of this writing the Development and Research Team is still gathering reports from users that has been having the same issue with the actual unit that you have returned to Newegg, I am sad that the experience that you had with the unit was different from what the unit was intended for. If incase I receive any update I reach out to you and provide you with the update".

I don't know if the model has issues in general, but I wasn't willing to chance it.
 
Just a follow up. The Hydro Copper arrived and is in my system. The card idles at 32C (Poseidon was 39-40). When I OC this card and run a couple Furmarks it caps out at 39-40C. The previous card would shoot into the 80s damn near instantly and would throttle at 90C.

Very happy to say this card is working as advertised.
 
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