Strap on your life preservers, folks, here comes the wet and wild liquid cooled variants of NVIDIA's
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 2080 graphics cards.
MSI has taken the plunge with four new models, two of which are designed for straight liquid cooling setups, and two others that are hybrid all-in-one solutions.
Starting with the latter, MSI's new Sea Hawk X models combine a traditional blower-style air cooler with an AIO liquid cooler that is already attached to the graphics card. All users have to do is install the card as they normally would, and mount then mount the 120mm radiator with fan attached to the rear or top of their case.
The GeForce RTX 2080 Sea Hawk X comes factory overclocked with a 1,860MHz boost clock, versus 1,800MHz on the
NVIDIA's also-overclocked Founders Edition, and 1,710MHz on reference models. The base clock is the same on all three variants, at 1,515MHz.
MSI also overclocked the boost clock on its GeForce RTX 2080 Sea Hawk EK X to 1,860MHz. Unlike the Sea Hawk X, however, the EK X model sports a full body waterblock witha nickel-plated copper base. It's meant for systems that already have a custom liquid cooling loop in place. Liquid flows in from the top and cools the critical components, including the GPU, memory, PWM, and other areas.
The same options are available on the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, with the Sea Hawk X and EX X models both overclocked to 1,755MHz. That's up from 1,635MHz on NVIDIA's Founders Edition model, and 1,545MHz on the reference design.
MSI did not say how much these new cards will cost or when they will be available to purchase.