Gadgetory

today we're finally reviewing EVGA is 1080 TI FC two hybrids that we tore down before copy text this will probably be one of the last 10 HD eyes that we review for some time and that's because the FPS is really pretty much the same so is overclocking between all of these a IB partner models but there's one really important aspect that's not looked at too frequently and that is noise as it compares to thermals particularly when you normalize for one of them and test all the coolers at the same DBA output before that this content is brought to you by custom backplate makers at v1 tech comm v1 tech builds GP back ways to order with their online customization tool making it easy to theme upcoming PC build back plates cost $25 end up and are installed via magnet and can be seen in some shots of the cards reviewing that lately used code gamers Nexus 5 for 5 dollars off your order or click the link below so this is the st2 hybrid we tore down previously as stated and showed that as we've seen in the past cards there is a VRAM cooling plate that connects by thermal paste to the CLC which is an EVGA liquid cooler that's made by AC text an AC tech 4.5 gen pump those run a bit faster than Gen 4 at around 3600 rpm plus or minus a couple hundred rpm and it's got an EVGA fan they've done some changes to the cooling solution for this round of hybrid cards versus the previous round but the main thing of note is that this is still an ST - so it's the same PCB as the other SC - the air-cooled one which is the same PCB as the reference card and it's still got the SC two add-ons like the icx thermistors on it the MTC's that are on the board so this card is not too different from the st2 that we already reviewed for that reason we're not even going to look at gaming performance in this video because honestly it's pointless it's going to be the same the thing that we care about here is just thermals and then noise as it relates that we've got all the tests on that of course in terms of interior construction it's got the beer and plate for cooling on the memory module and then there's actually a separate piece once you pull the shroud off and we can show our teardown footage of the vrm cooling component so that's a tiny fan at the top and aluminum heat sink was just a thin stack and that covers your BRM components whereas the vram is covered by the plate and then the backside has the normal aluminum die cast plate split into two with their old pads to connect to the back side of the PCB the BRM fan really doesn't do a whole lot unless it has to it tends to sit passive at 0% rpm when it's not under any workload at all and then once you put a real gaming word or a power virus workload on it it'll go to about 28 percent of its total spinning its RPM availability and that tends to be about 870 to 900 rpm so it's really quiet it doesn't really pick up on a noise meter if you're running with the radiator fan under any kind of load anyway basically making the vrm fan silenced because it's just going to be covered up by everything else in the system and then the radiator fan as we'll get into with the noise testing still runs a bit louder EVGA has had this thing for a while now where their cards tend to be a bit louder but also cooler than their competition finally they're doing something about that it does seem like the cards are getting quieter with time this is the first hybrid card we've tested where it's actually closer to 40 DBA rather than being at something like 44 so good on them for listening to that criticism and moving to improve there's still some things they could do for example currently in this state the radiator fan slaves to the liquid temperature which is an ASA tech thing that's not really something that EVGA has control over there's a thermocouple stuck into the pump block and it's coated in a ton of thermal paste and that is what tells us the liquid temperature EVGA has this fan slaving to that temperature which tends to be something like 26 to 32 Celsius or thereabout doesn't really go higher than that and because liquid temperature doesn't go higher than that almost ever the fan is following a parameter that doesn't make a lot of sense to follow but with the new sixth generation of base tech pumps that should change we talked about in our Computex coverage at the Corsair suite we are curious to learn more about that let's get into the testing as always you can find the full testing methodology in the article that's linked in the description below we're starting off with a really simple chart this is frequency versus time so there's really only two things we'll look at here in temperature over a time axis and as you can see it's fairly smooth overall starting out we don't really lose a whole lot off the clock from the get-go like we do with a lot of the air coolers but you do still have dips at times moving on to more important test in like thermals versus the sc2 non-hybrid and then later we'll test with the vram plates on versus often an a/b test we can see in this chart that the SC 2 and SC 2 hybrid are easily compared given that their thermistors are located in the same places though we do actually place our own thermocouples on the card as well in addition to EB J's MTC's our ability to compare these two cards directly is in contrast to the FTW 3 which is not comparable in power component readouts given it's completely different power design and more importantly it's different NTC location on the board we've seen some people online compare the FCW 3 and sc2 thermistors to each other in temperature testing but unfortunately it doesn't really work like that because they're in different spots EVGA is doing better this generation with hybrid cooling as stated previously and seems to have learned that running a 100% rated or fan speed all the time isn't actually necessary that's reflected in these results we don't see quite as big of a thermal improvement as in previous generations that's because the noise levels are actually tolerable now and have gone down this has been Evie J's biggest weak point for a long time now and they're working to resolve the noise output while meeting expectations thermally that t2 hybrid looks to be about at the right place ranking 20 Celsius lower than sc2 non-hybrid and GP diode readings about 13 C lower in mem 110 T lower in mem 290 lower on mem 3 and then power component temperatures are also down a bit across the board a regarding the previous numbers and some of the other ones coming up a couple quick notes here we take thermals a lot more seriously than you might be used to if you're new here and that means that some of what we do involves logging different types of thermal readouts and for these 2 that would be V RAM and one of the power components to validate EVGA Zen pcs make sure that they're telling an accurate measurement of the temperature and also just so that we have comparable data to our previous test then we run another set of thermocouple to monitor the ambient temperature and that is used to apply a modifier to the results as necessary to make sure that we've normalized for ambience as best we can and then further our testing measurements the averaging for the numbers that you see in the bar charts not the overtime charts is done at steady-state so that's once the GPU has stopped fluctuating at least within reason because of the way we're working with the modifier now not all values are going to be a hard delta T over ambient but some of them are if they are we'll mention it and the chart will say so we're moving now to our noise normalize the charts where we configure the cards to run at a forty DBA output this helps us understand cooling efficiency for card rather than just its stock performance so our performance of course is highly variable and will hinge completely on whether the manufacturer built for noise or for thermals here we're looking at strictly the cooling efficiency at a fixed noise output and we're not yet normalizing for power but might do that in the future starting with GPU numbers the EVGA 1080 is c2 hybrid is the second coolest on our charts operating a sustained 24.9 southeast LT over ambient this places the card about twenty C cooler than the FT w3 though that TW three had some testing caveats that we detailed in our unveiling of this test method which was the AC strict review primarily that we configured the fans to a synchronous speed the extreme or discard is nearby with the gaming ex still showing the prowess of MSI's Twin Frozr dual air cooler design Asus keeps a hold of the best efficiency for an air cooler title and is outranked only by the liquid cooled devices by about six Celsius at that the armor is the worst card we've tested when air cooled but it's gaming ax PCB makes it an excellent candidate for h2o which is what you see here the armor CL C is a 570 LC and we're also using a gentle typhoon fan but there's something else that's more important EVGA is sharing its liquid cooling solution with a copper plate that conducts from the vram increasing the heat load relative to the constant heat dissipation we are increasing our heat load by approximately 15 watts by doing this because we're also cooling the VM but again these are just the GPU temperatures moving now it's a power component temperatures we see the sc2 runs a warmer vrm target than its neighbors at 42.2 celsius delta T over ambient near the gaming axe and FTW three this is another situation like the FT w3 where we could configure the vrm fans run faster while the radiator fan could have run slower but we ultimately decided to follow EVGA zhan fan curve the curve dictated a roughly 28 percent of erm fan rpm under load which fit well with our 70% rated or fan rpm for a 40 DBA output jointly performance isn't neither impressive nor bad we are well within the spec of these FETs even when measuring what is effectively a case temperature finally here's a look at VRAM performance the sc2 hybrid manages to keep the lowest vram temperature of all largely thanks to EVGA his decision to cool the vram via copper plate like contact the CLC and the other cards at least some of them are not far behind but we were curious how much that copper plate would actually impact things if removed so we ran some a b tests with it taken off the radiator fan was configured to 100% for these tests the vrm fan again at 28% our difference in GPU temperature is within error bars and so is effectively identical the rest of the temperatures see a hike particularly for memory the copper plate improves performance from 66 Celsius to 55 Celsius on mem 173 to 58 on them - pretty big jump and from 68 to 61 Celsius on them three power follows this trend just to a lesser degree finally here's a look at the noise output verses various RPMs on the radiator and vrm fans under Auto settings the EVGA card tends to stick just around or right under 40 DBA plus or minus 3 DBA depending on how heavy the load is when it is closer to those lower load scenarios and we still think EVGA could improve their noise with these cards but it does start to enter territory where your max temperatures run higher for lower noise and although that reflects well for folks who care about noise it might not look good in less scrupulous reviews or for more casual users thermals are good here they're not the best temperatures we've ever seen out of an EVGA hybrid card but that's for a few reasons one of them EVGA is finally figuring out fan curves to balance the noise level to the temperatures because you don't need to run a 30 or 40 Celsius core temperature at the risk of really high noise so they figured that out and that means that noise has gone down which is great but temperatures of course have gone up a little bit it's still much cooler than most of the air-cooled cards although the asus strix is a pretty good competitor if you do prefer air it's just at $780 as well so there's that to consider and check out our Strix review for the rest on that this thing also contributes to what appear to be higher GPUs that diode or core temperatures because again you're increasing the amount of heat and watch we're adding about 15 watts of heat cooling the vram to the CLC this is getting synced to the CLC and so of course your temperatures are going to look a bit higher and that's part of that as well in terms of generational improvement between the EVGA hybrid series or in this case generational slight increase in GPU temperatures at Auto settings because they've actually improved things so it's not quite as cut and dry as is it cooler than previously clearly because it's not necessarily cooler than previously but it's still better as a whole so EVGA is done well there now this is still an 810 dollar card it's not going to gain better than a 720 dollar card it's not getting better than the sc2 Black Edition for the most part there will be a slight change because the clock rates are a bit different and that's really about it you if you really really cared about that 1% 1 to 3% change you could overclock the card they're going to overclock pretty close to the same because they're all 1080p eyes that doesn't really change til you start getting into exotic cooling or into custom BIOS tweaking like with a kingpin or with a lightning card it's going to be the same for gaming performance what does matter is noise and temperatures temperatures are pretty close to some of the better air-cooled cards the gaming X at $750 just does just fine the FT w3 at 780 dollars also does fine although we would recommend the asus strix over that one which is also having hundred and eighty dollars but for noise levels you can get a lot further with liquid which is what this does so if noise is something that you care deeply about then it's not a bad idea to grab something like this or look into one of the other CLC cards we haven't reviewed the Seahawk because they've really just not been available this generation but this card if you care about noise or what you should do is probably connect a different fan or plug this one into the motherboard control the fan speed manually set it to one speed permanently because you can run it at 40% and it'll be fine for life and then you also get rid of the change in noise where you get the frequency change as the fan ramps so you get rid of that you have a lower noise output in DB a you have a more consistent noise output in frequency and you have similar cooling performance to the best air cooled card but quieter so that's the way to use this card now that does mean that a lot of people get priced out and that's fine don't buy it if that doesn't work for you or if you don't care about that because they hundred dollars is too much if you don't care about noise and you're buying one of these but that should pretty much wrap it up if you need more information click the link in the description below you can go to patreon.com/scishow sexist elves out with this testing directly or you can go to store doc gamers next to spout nice to grab a shirt like this one the GM graft Lego although thanks to you all we are a host out of stock again so subscribe for more I'll see you all next time you