Earlier this week, a new product showed up on Gigabyte's website that has garnered quite a bit of attention. The GA-N980X3WA-4GD WaterForce Tri-SLI is a 3-Way SLI system with integrated water cooling powered by a set of three GeForce GTX 980 GPUs.
That. Looks. Amazing.
What you are looking at is a 3-Way closed loop water cooling system with an external enclosure to hold the radiators while providing a display full of information including temperatures, fans speeds and more. Specifications on the Gigabyte site are limited for now, but we can infer a lot from them:
- WATERFORCE :3-WAY SLI Water Cooling System
- Real-Time Display and Control
- Flex Display Technology
- Powered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU
- Integrated with 4GB GDDR5 memory 256-bit memory interface(Single Card)
- Features Dual-link DVI-I / DVI-D / HDMI / DisplayPort*3(Single Card)
- BASE: 1228 MHz / BOOST: 1329 MHz
- System power supply requirement: 1200W(with six 8-pin external power connectors)
The GPUs on each card are your standard GeForce GTX 980 with 4GB of memory (we reviewed it here) though they are running at overclocked base and boost clock speeds, as you would hope with all that water cooling power behind it. You will need a 1200+ watt power supply for this setup, which makes sense considering the GPU horsepower you'll have access to.
Another interesting feature Gigabyte is listing is called GPU Gauntlet Sorting.
With GPU Gauntlet™ Sorting, the Gigabyte SOC graphics card guarantees the higher overclocking capability in terms of excellent power switching.
Essentially, Gigabyte is going to make sure that the GPUs on the WaterForce Tri-SLI are the best they can get their hands on, with the best chance for overclocking higher than stock.
Setup looks interesting – the radiators and fans will be in the external enclosure with tubing passing into the system through a 5.25-in bay. It will need to have quick connect/disconnect points at either the GPU or radiator to make that installation method possible.
Pricing and availability are still unknown, but don't expect to get it cheap. With the GTX 980 still selling for at least $550, you should expect something in the $2000 range or above with all the custom hardware and fittings involved.
Can I get two please?
One tiny mistake that
One tiny mistake that Gigabyte seems to be making consistently is putting blue leds in the Gaming series of video cards and sli bridges, it doesnt even match their own gaming series(or any motherboard series) motherboards. Also that “cooler” might end up being too expensive, and takes up 2 slots on each of video cards which doesnt make any sense at all. Even a custom water cooling loop dedicated to video cards would do a better job compared to this monstrosity.
Well this setup is kind of
Well this setup is kind of stupid. I’d rather get a single Radiator and a D5 pump which will be way more quit than this.
AIOs suck!
completely agreed, not to
completely agreed, not to mention there would be only two tubes going from gpu’s to the rad, probably better performance, and a lot better looks
$2000? I thought so too. But
$2000? I thought so too. But it’s $3000 based on older info from Hexus about the equivalent Waterforce with the three 780Tis.
http://hexus.net/tv/show/2014/06/Gigabyte_WaterForce_liquid_cools_three_GeForce_GTX_780_Ti_cards
well its stupid anyway. I’d
well its stupid anyway. I’d rather go for three R9 290, a huge rad, Laing D5 pump and a res. This setup will be around 1500$ maybe a little more if you also cool your CPU and use shiny bitspower fittings.
But you can get pretty much the same performance for half the price.
By the way, this is pretty much the setting i’m currently running ^^
But can It run crysis? I meen
But can It run crysis? I meen unity, can it run unity? Also I gota say that looks sick, the over the top-edness of it all, it’s so cyberpunk with that big fucking fan/radiator farm. A potential hack comes to mind, masivley increase the length of the conections and BAMB, sickest game system ever runing silent, cooler is in another room or even out on the balcony.
Fugly.
Fugly.
Ugly laughable mess.
Ugly laughable mess.