Gadgetory

Kable mod premium cable sets offer a variety of colors and combinations for your build compatible with over 80 power supplies and utilize the best sleeving on the market click now to learn more hello everyone I'm Dimitri with Harbor Canucks and on the review table today we have a really exciting GPU allowing enthusiast users to push the overclocking envelope - impressive Heights while maintaining the thermal envelope and the noise footprint to a minimum this is the EVGA GTX 980 hybrid first announced at CES the 980 hybrid is a really exciting card for today's small form-factor pcs because of the built-in 120 millimeter radiator thus the hybrid between water-cooled GPU and air-cooled VRMs and the memory and the rest of the board of course now pricing wise you are looking at $650 which is actually quite competitive around the non-reference 980 s clocked at 14% higher on the base and boost clock versus a reference card and is actually the highest clock 980 that we've seen so far while keeping the memory speed at 7000 megahertz and to refresh your memory the 980 is equipped with 2048 quarter cores 4 gigabytes of vram features all the latest from Nvidia including g-sync support game works and game stream MFA a and D SR or dynamic super resolution about which you can find out more here in our video the IO has not changed we still have a triple DisplayPort 1.2 output HDMI 2.0 and DVI it still requires the dual 6 pin for power and while I appreciate the text here to reveal the model number there are no illuminated parts on this GPU and I think EVGA has missed an opportunity to add back lights for that little extra Flair however I am happy to see a backplate for extra cooling Plus just to cover the black PCB with proper orientation of the lettering the shroud on the card looks fine I still prefer the looks of the reference 980 but the inclusion of this 120mm radiator means much quieter and cooler operation the tubing is thread covered and while we haven't told us any fraying on our sample you'd still want to be careful with any sharp edges inside your case to maintain the tubing in pristine condition the fan cable is routed alongside one of the tubes and plugged into an extension that is then routed into the board of the GPU thus the RPM is fully adjusted based on the GPU temperature but this also means that you can easily replace the included 120mm or fan with one of your choice and if you are thinking of placing a second fan for push-pull system that will have to be connected separately now you may be thinking of it's an inconvenience to find a spot for that 120mm a radiator inside a case and I would say it's actually a perfect fit for small form factors where airflow is limited and standard blower style would suffer but here's the 980 hybrid inside the m3 end case it's a tiny chassis but accommodates the GPU very well with that side bracket and here's another example inside the fan Tech's evolved ITX where both the GPU and the CPU are water cooled resulting in an extremely quiet system and also keeping the noise down so it's benchmarking time and as expected the 980 hybrid thanks to its higher base and boost clocks fits right in between the tight necks and the reference 980 it's certainly a 1440p gaming card that's for sure but it's when we come to things like frequency over time where the thermal envelope has so much Headroom the clocks stay consistent while you can see the reference time 80 drops clock speeds and midway due to the heat and the start of the show I would say would be the temperatures that barely reach 40 degrees C under load especially when you compare it to the reference and the P&Y card there but also don't forget the acoustic performance maintaining such stable thermal footprint and not needing to ramp up any of the two fans making this the quietest 980 on the market and this makes it a perfect segment to talk about overclocking performance with our sample reaching and totally stable its 1620 megahertz on the core so this is a good two hundred thirty megahertz over the factory boost clock allowing you to really close that gap between the Titan X so without a doubt the EVGA 980 hybrid is an impressively powerful and capable GPU that handles thermals acoustics and overclocking like a champ as long as you can accommodate for that 120 min the radiator inside your case you'd be completely satisfied with this damn good card I would like to see illuminated text on top of the card just to spice things up but other than that it's actually quite difficult to find any flaws and well that concludes our review of the EVGA GTX 980 hybrid what do you think are we to see more GPUs incorporate this water cooling approach and would you consider installing one of those all-in-one brackets on your card let us know with a comment below thank you so much for watching make sure to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next one