EVGA Greets GeForce GTX 980 & 970 Launch With Brand-new ACX 2.0 Cooler
By now, you've hopefully had a chance to check out our in-depth look at NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970 & 980 graphics cards. Unless you were half-asleep while reading, chances are you've been left very impressed, and now you're wondering which is the right make and model to go with. Well, it's hard to draw a definitive conclusion so easily, but EVGA has a couple of products on tap that are well worth the consideration.
With this launch, EVGA has unveiled its ACX 2.0 cooler; Marco took a look at the GTX 970 model in the article linked-to above. The company is really touting this as being something special, and giving a friendly jab to the competition at the same time. "Most graphics card manufacturers only focus on one aspect when designing their cooling solution and neglect all other aspects of the fan design and heatsink."
Here's something interesting you might not have thought of before (admittedly, I didn't, either): "Modern NVIDIA graphics cards have a maximum power ceiling that takes into account the fan power consumption, meaning the lower the power consumption from the fan, the more power available for the GPU! Triple fan coolers from competitors increase power consumption, thereby lowering your maximum overclocking headroom. When it comes to graphics cards cooling, less is more!"
I find that pretty intriguing, and I do suppose it makes sense. To combat this issue, EVGA uses 11-blade fans that increase CFM but keep a reduced noise-level. Improved magnets help add 150 RPM to the maximum speed, and the use of more silicon steel increases the magnet strength. In the end, EVGA promises temperatures 26% lower, noise 36% quieter, and fan power consumption a staggering 250% less when compared to the reference cooler.
As is typical with these big launches, EVGA is offering an unbelievable number of 980 and 970 variants to choose from - fifteen - so you should have no problem finding a model that perfectly suits you. That is, as long as you don't mind waiting for some of them to come in stock. As expected, most models around the Web have sold-out due to the launch today, so you might need to have a little patience to wait for more to come back in stock. I think it's safe to say that a short wait will be well worth it.