With their GTX TITAN, NVIDIA have a graphics card in their portfolio that ships with a rather decend reference cooler. Nevertheless we want to find out what difference a full-cover water block can make when you put it on a mighty GTX TITAN. For this purpose EK Water Blocks shipped a EK-FC TITAN waterblock and it will be interesting to see what is going to be possible with this block strapped to a GTX TITAN.


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As we already mentioned, in this article we're going to have a closer look at the possible differences between a watercooled and an aircooled GTX TITAN. For this purpose EK Water Blocks shipped us one of their EK-FC TITAN fullcover waterblock. First of all we're going to have a closer look at both, the water as well as the aircooler and afterwards we will run both cards through our set of recent games with stock clocks as well as overclocked to the coolers specific maximum. Apparently we will also show you some temperatures.

Gainward GTX TITAN - Watercooling EK-FC TITANI

EK Water Blocks has a beautiful full-cover water block in it's portfolio, which is compatible with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN graphics cards that comply with reference design. The block establishes direct contact to GPU, memory as well as VRM area. This way you can be sure there is going to be best possible cooling whereever it's needed. The cooler EK Water Blocks provided us with has been made from nickel plated electrolyte copper. Above the GPU there is a thin channel structure to provide additional surface area, where it actually makes sense to have it. On top of the cooper block there is a plexi cover and on the right hand side you can see a brushed stainless steel plate. Looking for threads we find G1/4 inch one's where you can attach a vast majority of fittings. The threads have been cut into black POM acetal, which is a rather hard plastic material. Nevertheless it's enough to tighten fittings by hand to achieve sufficient sealing and you don't have to use a gripper. In fact by using a gripper you can break the plastic. Manufacturing quality on EK products is exceptional. These blocks are just perfectly made and the looks are breathtaking.

GTX TITAN - Aircooling DirectCU II

In case of the NVIDIA reference cooler for the GeForce GTX TITAN you get a construction that is built around a radial fan as well as well performing cooling block, that sits directly on top of the GPU. The cooling block for the GPU as well as the radial fan have been fit to a base plate made from aluminium. This aluminium plate is in direct contact with the memory chips as well as the VRM area and it's taking care of also keeping these parts cool. If we look at the block sitting directly on top of the GPU then we find a rather massive vapor chamber, which is basically a huge heatpipe. Other than that lots of thin fins are in touch with the base plate and these fins get fresh air from the blower-type cooler located in the back of the card. Usually hardware manufacturers use vapor chambers only on high-end products and the reason for that is obviously that they're more expensive than standard heatpipes. Other than that makers choose this technology when there is only limited space avialable. This is definitely the case with the GTX TITAN since NVIDIA was really keen on a sleek looking design.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 9 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 10 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 11 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 12 - Metro: Last Light
Page 5 - BattleField 4	Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - BattleField 3	Page 14 - Temperatures
Page 7 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 15 - Index
Page 8 - Crysis 3	Page 16 - Conclusion