Ummmm ….. 201% ….. I divide by 100% power target …. Multiply by the (calculations in the background 😂🤣🤪)…… so they’re 100% committed to roughly a 50.5% power target of 450w = a 226’ish watt GPU 😒😏🤪
I think the power target is a problem based on the description on the product from the vendor. I personally would have been disappointed that I couldn't raise the power Target. It looks like a really great product, but if I water cools something I want to be able to push it to the bleeding edge, not just stock.
The 4090 already IS at the bleeding edge, stock. Nvidia screwed up tbh, if they released it with lower power limits, maybe it wouldn't be spontaneously combusting all over the place, and OCers would still be able to enjoy the illusion that they're "squeezing more out of it".
I wanted to get this as it was the only stock waterblock version out there. Not anymore, especially due to the high price. It's a lot cheaper to produce this card than a 2kg air-cooled one, but still this one is ~2300eur. This, plus the low quality VRM and the lack of overclocking potential makes me wonder what were they thinking with this. It's brutal indeed.
Great review. Regarding the waterflow @3:48. It is because the air cannot get out and wants up. You should take the card out and manoeuvre it around so you get all the air out 🙂
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Get a reference card with unlocked power limit and swap coolers ;) Then you could test that cooler on a card with bigger power targets..
@@leonmah Those cards probably had PCB mods to allow them to overcome power and voltage limits. Nvidia is locking down on the 4090 so they don't lose sales when they shove 4090 Ti out the door with a 600W max TBP, even with the sliders cranked up on max.
Excellent information and thank you. That power limited "water blocked" makes absolutely no sense to me. My takeaway is my pre-ordered EK block should offer excellent and stable performance.
@@DJaquithFL I managed to buy exactly the same card at rrp from gumtree (like craigslist) the owner had a founders card lined up and hadn't even opened the gigabyte box so just needed his money back. I'm very happy with it. Its a bit plasticky compared to the ultra solid 3090fe I had before but the performance is great. I'm also waiting on my ek waterblock but have the gigabyte card vertical mounted in a corsair 7000d case. No strain or bends on the power connector and plenty fresh air. Happy days. Cheers.
@@stevenross-watt8640 .. I tried to get the ASUS ROG OC but it was taken off NewEgg's in-house MSRP and replaced by a mystery reseller for 2X the price just prior to launch. The FE was my second choice but it was sold out by BOTS on BestBuy faster than a refreshed screen. I only paid MSRP I could have bought 2 but that made no sense to me. The only negative is that EK isn't listing / selling an Active back plate for it. Anyway you too Good Luck!!!
@@DJaquithFL interesting. You may already know but the 4090 doesn't have vram on the rear of the pcb like the 3090 did so it doesn't need an active backplate. You may want one for your own cool tech project side but so far I have seen zero need for one and the video here showing that the backplate is just warm concludes that for me. I'm also feeling the gaming oc air cooling is so good that I'll not really see a benefit from wayercooling. Mines holding 60°c and let's assume 45°c to 50°c on water. As much as I pike custom waterloops losing my 4 year warranty for 10°c is not making sense at the moment. You thinking just do it anyway? :)
The IChill Frostbite WAS my intended card until I saw the price and (non) availability on release day. Bought an Asus TUF OC instead. I would have been REALLY pissed to see only a 450W limit on a waterblock! My previous card was an Aorus 3090 Xtreme that I fitted with a Bykski waterblock. The TUF OC 4090 seems to run so cool as to not be worth watercooling.
Did you get TUF anywhere near MSRP? I was hoping to snatch one of these since they were supposedly same price as FE but not in the UK... cheapest start at 2000 which is too much (I've planned grabbing TUF and slapping Eiswolf on it which at MSRP would be actually cheaper than 2000...)
@@Micromation The non OC TUF was indeed close to the FE on pricing but simply unavailable (like the FE). Got the TUF OC for 2100 inc VAT which was list price. Expensive, but at least I had the card next day.
I installed an Alphacool Eisblock GPX waterblock on my Inno3D RTX 4090 X3 OC on the first day of RTX 4090 launch, essentially got a RTX 4090 iChill Frostbite. I am impressed with both thermal and acoustic performance, and my RAM kit is also cooler than before as it no longer needs to take hot air exhausted from VGA cooler.
Wish you'd mention the water temperature too. It's very hard to know how good it is without knowing the delta between water temperature and GPU temperature
Honestly for the price (even if we don't consider the maketing), a locked power target card with only a Reference pcb is not fine. Great review anyway! ps your cat has orange beautiful eyes :D
Sure do love seeing them air bubbles inside the block itself. Really aids in the dissipation of that heat. Please tell me you got rid of it eventually?
Respectfully, I think we probably *do* need to talk about this board's power circuitry because Inno3D seem to have gone very barebones for what is presumably their flagship 4090 - I see 14 GPU phases out of a possible 20, 3 memory phases out of 4 and multiple missing caps. I can't make out the exact models used but if this is an X3 with an Alphacool block then those are 55A phases. Which makes the power circuitry even worse than the 16x55-fitted Palit GameRock that Buildzoid tore down (and then tore apart) a couple of weeks back, noting 16% transients.
By 16% transients you mean the popular "transient spikes" in power draw? If yes then I believe 16% is a super good result, isn't it? I mean 30xx series had transient spikes of like 150% or something like that. I guess thay I probably miss here something badly, would be nice if you could expain.
@@sokolinek Transients are much lower on 4000 series than on 3000 series. Better engineered 4090s have as low as 5% spikes, so 16% is pretty bad comparatively. Although in the general sense, even 16% is fine.
Sometimes it's less about drag racing the thing and more about making it not be a breeze block dangling off your GPU slot. This potentially makes SFF 4090 builds possible without going stupid with dremels.
it was exactly the same with the inno3D RTX 3090 ICHILL Frostbite, the only way to unlock the power limit was to install a mod bios (or bios from another supplier)
I think for coil whine detection, it would be good to set all the fans in the pc to a specific level, and have a mic taped near the vrm, and look for changes in audio frequency when in desktop and when in games of different frame rates. in the first place im not sure how feasible it is for gpu manufacturer to eliminate coil whine, but usually reviewers only points it out if their sample has terrible whining
I like that they sell this card with a custom water block, I hope to see much more of this. So easy just add the card to your excising water cooling loop and you are god to go.👍
Well yeah, you would need to drain the loop, put paper tissues all over your PC, put this thing in and the tubes as well, fill the loop, run it for hours to get air bubbles out and make sure you don't have leaks (would be very strange to have leaks suddenly if you just put a pre-blocked GPU in, though), and test it to see if you are good to go. Not exactly like changing an air cooled card, but still something I'd prefer as I have a custom loop. Keeps me from upgrading though, the hassle is real! I think the 450W hard target actually might be suitable for me as I only have 850W PSU, would not want to risk it. However, instead of upgrading from 6900xt, I think I'll just build a new system from scratch and give the existing one to the wife for gaming. We'll see if Liquid Devil 7900XTX changes my mind. It would have to have lower transient spikes than 6900xt for me to upgrade.
@@MadViking82 I was not recommending others to get a custom water loop. But i have one my self and changing to that chard would be both easy and fun to me. You can get fittings that will stop the water from spilling when you disconnect them, then a little tissue paper is all you need. I just use a drain valve at the lowest point of my loop, and i have no problem bleeding my loop, turning the water pump on and tilting the tower a few times from side to side is enough in my case. It would take me more time than changing an air card but it would not be a huge pain for me. An AIO card would be much worse in my case. And I won't have wasted a big air-cooler for nothing and having to disassemble the card, find a card and a water block that fits together and it should be cheaper cause no air cooler is needed.
my hunch on the power limit is that they realised raising it doesn't really make much sense since the die's limited by voltage anyway, not power. once you replace the stock thermal pads/paste, add an undervolt and overclock the memory, 450W is probably the sweetspot/cap for reliability&stability while watercooled (potentially ~500W being the absolute limit?). plus then you don't get supplied with nVidia's dodgy 600w 12pin adapter but we didn't get a good look at the one supplied so it's hard to say if it doesn't use a similar technique. maybe this limit will be lifted in future (either OEM update or modding or flashing a competitor's BIOS if anyone else used the reference design), but considering how some of the phases are unpopulated I wouldn't hold my breath; however, as TechPowerup hasn't released a teardown to view what components they used just yet, the quality of the components used may offset the unpopulated phases as it IS the reference design which was probably specced to use the lowest-quality/cheapest components available (i.e reference 20*40A phases totals 800Amps, vs for example custom 14*60A phases totalling 840Amps)
The grub screw style plugs seem to have been developed for alphacool's new HPE radiators, the idea being that they sit flush with the surface of the rad caps.
They've had them for years, and yes they were designed for the rads. Alphacool radiators(which have 2 or 3 ports per tank) in the 360/480/520 versions weren't sitting flush with whatever metal you were mounting them to due to the unused(mounting plate side) port plugs sticking out.
These reviews are awesome. I have been most excited about these water-cooled AIB cards because it should reduce cost and waste compared to buying a air-cooled card and replacing the air cooler with a waterblock. However the limited power limit on this model is a huge disappointment.
Precisely the card I was planning to buy. Thank you so much for posting. Also prefer the lower power limit and running the card in its efficient region.
I have an Inno3D Frostbite 3080 and had to replace the waterblock with one from EK as it simply did not cool the memory. I do not rate Alphacool gpu blocks
I've got an EK ASUS TUF/Strix 4090 block on pre-order, it was nice to see how a custom block handles the power of a 4090. Also, the size of the card with a block attached is greatly appreciated. I had to move my Singularity pump/res to the very front of a O11D XL to fit the air-cooled TUF 4090 OC (vertically mounted). Once the EK block is installed, it'll bring the overall length of the card down from 348.2mm to 260mm (about 20mm shorted than a 1080TI block). PS. The plugs are also used in the Alphacool v2 NexXxoS radiators but don't try using them in v1's. I ended up screwing one right inside a 45mm X-Flow radiator _never to return_ (a stop collar at the base of the thread is required to be able to use them). At least it doesn't rattle with the pump going :)
If the case stood in its vertical configuration as tower, the air bubbles would float against the water block which would interfere with heat transfer.
With all due respect, if the reviewer was anybody else, I'd cry out loud this is his first rodeo. I totally agree with comments regarding marketing BS. But: - It breaks my heart to see all those water bubbles. Seriously, a little shake for a while would have made the cooling loop a lot better. - I happened to have an opportunity to get this card - regardless of insane price, I know, I know... - and I'm more than satisfied, because: - Simply one-click overclock with GeForce Experience OC feature makes it boost up to 2910 MHz well within the 450 W envolepe and moderate thermals. I'm impressed and I'm happy. - With this card increasing power limit to 600 W would yield maybe another 90-100 Mhz, which is futile if you think of added power to performance ratio.
For a sff itx build this would be a killer GPU to have ….. and let’s face it, another potential 100-150watts of heat and massive power draw, for an extra few fps is pointless for many.
If I had to market this card, I would use terms like "sophisticated and sleek", "for the best cooling in a compact design" and other terms like that. If I had the budget for a 4090 build I would not care for 2% performance. I would however very much care for the aesthetics it has and the good temperature. This card can be run in a compact case, and there is nothing I like better then the idea of having the fastest components available at their rated speeds in as small a formfactor as possible. Compact just looks more neat, so yeah.
Snatched one at 1900€, expecting a nice UV+OC resulting in a mild 3-4% performance over stock while having stable clocks due to low temps. This also has 3 year warranty, so that's a nice addition.
I believe these new alphacool blocks are *chromium* plated instead of nickel. At least that’s what they announced in their marketing a couple weeks ago
Brilliant video! It makes it very clear that RTX4090 cards are MUCH better if custom water cooled (able to constantly boost because of much lower temperatures, lower power consumption, much smaller size GPU so it can fit in a lot more cases, etc. & so outperforms founders edition in every way), & as pre-water blocked GPUs by the manufacturer they remove any drawbacks (no e-waste from throwing away the cooling system for air cooling, no stress from having to switching over a GPU with the risk of breaking it & the damage not being covered by warranty, & they come with full manufacturer's warranty). The INNO3D RTX 4090 ICHILL Frostbite, which comes pre-installed with water blocks, although it does outperform the RTX4090 founders GPU, does not push the limits of the performance available with this configuration (e.g. it only comes with a power cable for max 450W), so it would be good to see other manufacturers do something similar, but who have tweaked the reference board from Nvidia to push for maximum performance, well beyond what's possible on an air cooled card, like the overclocked ROG STRIX, being sold with custom water blocks preinstalled as well. Take note ASUS!
I actually had a gpu destroyed because of bad contact and overheat of the power stages..not the gpu, and gigantic aircoolers would interfere with my wc reservoir so for me it was this or nothing (asus tuf+ekwb is an option but also the most scalped model on the market, a shop had 10 I clicked refresh 3s later they were gone the next day 8/10 were on 2nd hand market "brand new unopened" one guy alone had 4 and was even proud to say he scalped them from this particular website, since then no shop ever had stock in my country
pretty much goes with this product, as I wrote as comment ekwb 3090 and aours waterforce had only 2 connectors but bioses up to 390w which is still only +40w above minimum...for the 4090 we're talking up to +150w that's something else and it doesn't come free the only proper 600w (just not flash whatever and burn your card) have longer pcb this is one is 3.5cm shorter than even the FE with an ekwb waterblock
The adapter only delivers 525W. But, the fee should still accept them. For which Power Limit is set. The bad thing is that it is blocked from raising even to 600 watts. I'm not even talking about wanting higher.
Absolutely stunning card. I really like the trend of "smaller" wb cards. Tho the 450w powertarget is limiting i stick with the 99% of users who won't use ist anyways. Setting the powertarget to ~70% should yield basically the most efficient card as to date..
The price is just not there... I mean, it's literally 4090 with slapped Alphacool water block on it. It has no business being as expensive as they list it for :O You could grab FE or any other cheapest version of the card, slap Alphacool block on it yourself and voila.. or you could go with their AIO Eiswolf which is basically block with pump and 360 rad and it still would be cheaper...
Limiting your fps and res and gfx settings to what you can notice would be far more "efficient".... But you don't buy a V8 to pootle around at 2000rpms do you. These cards are unjustifiable excess on every metric. (and I know what excess looks like, I have a modded watercooled DTR "laptop" capable of drawing >600W from the wall xD) Not a judgement, just an objective observation, people are free to buy what they want for their reasons, so long as the reasons are sound and they're not deceiving themselves or others
I have one of the inno3d X3s, in my limited testing I have flashed it with several bios from other vendors, can confirm that apart from fan control going somewhat wonkey you can move the power target up to 600 by flashing either the Asus or Gigabyte roms, or going to 530 with MSI or 500 with Palit, all have worked fine but temps are not fantastic and performance of moving up to those is hardly worth it on Air for the power draw, the way of a 4090 owner seems to be to limit it to 300ish and get 95% of the performance for much less power and heat. but thats just my opinion.
@@mrvicco Honestly, I have the Palit 500w one (111% power target max) on mine but I have it limited to 65% which is getting around 300w. At least the fan control isn't screwy on this bios like it is with the 600w ones. But in truth, I wouldn't bother flashing it unless you specificly want a space heater. My card isn't exactly a golden sample, without pushing the voltage I can only get to 2980 stable, memory isn't horrible though, +1525 before error correction or artifacts kick in . When I set it to 500 I still hit power limit though when using the above settings in some games or furmark. But coming from 1080ti (sli when it worked) to this I'm more than happy playing at 4k with 300w draw.
EK are releasing a RTX 4090 founders edition GPU water cooling "kit" which includes BOTH a front active and back active back plate; it's called the "EK-Quantum Vector² FE RTX 4090 D-RGB ABP Set - Nickel + Plexi". From the pics on the EK website with the RGB, it looks like the best-looking GPU I have ever seen! And having seen the results of the INNO3D RTX 4090 ICHILL Frostbite, which comes pre-installed with only an active water block on the front and has no tweaks beyond the reference NVidia board, it still outperforms any other RTX4090 so long as you give it enough radiator space and big enough PSU, so the card constantly boosts to the max because of the thermal and power headroom! Could you please reach out to EK and see if you can get a pre-release to test for us? Would love to see a video of you reviewing a founders card with this new EK active blocks and compare it to a INNO3D RTX 4090 ICHILL Frostbite card in one of your water loops!
Love anything AlphaCool, my whole 2x 360 rad loop is all AlphaCool, cpu block, and gpu block. The price is far less than EK in similar parts but the quality is still just as good.
Inno3D use the 3 cable adapter on all of their cards it seems. So either they're a lower teir vender that doesn't get the higher capability PCB designs from Nvidia? Or they're like MSI and put in the bare minimum on their water cooled cards. I like the smaller size for a mATX system, would be great for going to trade shows as an off site rendering system.
The air bubbles in the water block are terrible. Having the pump push fluid vertically up uses the most pump head. I can't give my comment that it is a fail because the majority of systems are in cases. To regain head have the pump level with the block, and shorten tube lengths, and reduce bends. If that is done and there are still bubbles a booster pump would be needed and at that point I would say the cooler is a fail.
This whole 12VHPWR power cable situation seems to be a bit of a pain. I have an RTX 4090 that I wanted to clean up the cabling on from stock paired with a Corsair HX1000. During my search Corsair offers a 600W 12VHPWR Type-4 power cable but it only includes 2 8pin power leads. So it seems that Corsairs Type-4 power supplies are delivering 300 watts per 8-pin which seems like it will only further to add to the confusion. Not sure if anyone has covered this already and what your thoughts are.
while waiting the corsair cable for my HX1200i I ordered 2 different same design ones from aliexpress (4weeks shipping for me) I have the instruments required I'll bend them as required in my case power off then test them, jayztwocents actually made a video about the corsair cable fyi he has one, from his guesses they seem to have used a single thick copper wire or something he noticed the cable was stiffer than usual
Maybe the power limit has been added exactly to reduce the chances of coil whine, or the power stages and circuitry quality was such that going higher would be detrimental to overall card stability, thus the limit in power and just 3-pronged splitter.
G'day Marcin, yeah compared to FE 20 + 3 they have cut quite a few Core VRM Components going down to 14 + 3 so that seems to be a sensible assumption, also it would be interesting to get a buildzoid PCB Breakdown so we can know his thoughts on the quality & performance of the components too.
That power limit is a little weird but as you said in normal operation day to day i end up anyway in undervolting and as you saw us in the vid, it's still hitting over 3GHz with that low power consumption so it's fine for me ;) It's also the only one on the market with preinstalled waterblock meaning no warranty voliation like we do on changing normal air cooled card into water cooled one (sad EVGA is no more). I've also passed on Frostbite at first due to high price but today (i don't know why) they dropped from about 2134 EUR to 1852 EUR (many shops dropped it's price like this now) while the cheapest aircooled 4090 is now for 1617 EUR in Poland so frostbite including warranty i now an interesting choice :) Thanks for the review, i may but it now :)
Oooo A grub screw with an O-ring. That is a game changing bit of brilliant innovation. That it definitely worth a patent.... said no body at all (apart from some patent office unfortunately)
Those temps are impressive. My 3080Ti Hydro Copper cards sit around 60C at full tilt pulling between 300-350W. Important to note though this is in a 30C ambient - drop that room temp 10C and the cards go down 10C as well!!! What was your room ambient? The same is true when you go bigger radiator = lower temps. No experience with their blocks but I am using alphacool rads - their 80mm thick rads in push/pull do an amazing job for pulling heat away. I have five of them in my system cooling four 3080Ti's and a 5960X. Best use case so far was 15C delta in a very warm 35C summer room 😎
Thanks for looking at this card, its been on my wish list, and now removed due to the locked power limit. What is the point of going to the trouble of custom loop when they do this? Idiots...
the point is to move the cooling to the rad to the front or the top of the case so it will fit into a normal sized ATX case, not one of the stupid huge E-ATX jumbo 20KG cases
@@smartmonkey777 my loop has been created so as to allow overclocking and move higher heat than stock. I was after one of these cards as a slot in replacement for soft and hard modded 3090 drawing 600w already. I appreciate your point on size, I guess you're right, it's not why I was interested in this card though.
I had this type of outlet/inlet screws on my 5700XT and man..i can tell you one of them was not sealing no matter how much tighten it was. I was lucky because i found it with my pressure tester before i fill water but man i was disapointed. There must be some manufacture defect on the sealing surface because i had to switch to more traditional type of screw that seal on main area of the block.
Amazing results however the newest 4090 cannot run some 4k games on full settings so what are we really debating is it really that powerful or should people just play 1080p on full settings.
How can Alphacool patent the standard stopper screw? That is how the textbook sais to do it with o-ring sealed screw. You seal on bottom of hole and use rest of hole for threads for screws. Your bleed screws on a breakline assembly takes this a step further by sealing metal-to-metal with no o-ring in bottom and with self sealed threads for a elegant bleed assembly. The principle is still the same.
G'day Roman, Makita & Shiek, Nice to see something a bit different to the usual ASUS, Gigabyte, FE & MSI reviews, 🤔I wonder if it is possible to flash the FE BIOS to the Frostbite so you get the extended Power Limit? plus if that is possible will the Adapter being 3 or 4 8pin PCIe still make a difference to the Power Target? Ps it would be cool if you could get some HiRes photos to Buildzoid for a PCB Breakdown 😁
You can't flash the FE bios, (ask me how I know) but the other vendor cards work. The 3-8Pin they send out give the card the go-ahead when running a 600w bios to go all the way.
Does this mean that a Strix or even Founders Edition 4090 with a waterblock you mount yourself will overclock higher because of the power limit of this card?
Should have pre-filled the block before connecting the lines, pretty sure that air isn't supposed to be in there... The side channels probably do not need as much flow and may rely on laminar flow at junction to move the water in there, which won't work if it's not full of water...
It doesn't even make sense because it's standard water block from Alphacool... I mean, it's cheap - the AIO (Eiswolf) for GPU costs 250 for block, integrated pump and 360 rad... half that for block alone that Inno3D comes with. Overclockers are just a bunch of scalpers, really...
@@sasbando Nvidia and AMD both now know, after 2019, that gamers are impatient, fickle and will pay thousands for this year's toy GPU. So why not charge thousands for this year's toy GPU? Don't like it, don't buy it.
I had the ichill x4 3090 and added the same waterblock myself, now the 4090 with the waterblock included, The quality is top notch. I love the the fact that it doesn't go higher than 450 watts. The performance increase is minimal, and the extra heat and powerusage for those few extra FPS is useless. That said, because it's running so cool, you can get it stable at around 2950 mhz. Perfect in my opinion, nobody is going to notice the difference between 2950 or 3050/3100. Regarding the waterflow problem, I had the same issue, just holding the card horizontal for a while will press out the air and the flow will be good afterwards. You can fit it vertical after that, and it'll keep flowing. Just make sure all the air is out of the system.
I'm relieved this is a nothingburger pre-built watercooled card are usually tame for example the EKWB-ASUS 3090 only had 2 connectors and a 366w power limit which is better than 350 but not much, the aorus waterforce had 370-390 the inno3d 370w, I didn't expect more than reference PCB (which opens the possibility of an EKWB if necessary but clearly not) and the 450w is low but since efficiency tests show it's already dumb I couldn't care for more and...that's the thing who buys them 1) you managed to grab one 2) you want to keep your warranty (outside na you touch a screw you're on your own) 3) the length it's 200m so 33% smaller than most other 3090...even watercooled (check ekwb blocks lengths) my previous 3090 330mm long destroyed the perfect bottom-top airflow of my lian li dynamic XL m.2 p.s. not sure your comment on the liquid flow is relevant with so many bubbles :P you know all you need to do is tilt and shake your pc in all directions and they will go right ? doesn't prove the airflow will be better but at least the block will be filled with liquid that mixes with the rest, the fact that bubbles are static means nothing that's what they do they cut and block the waterflow trust me I had zero bubbles left after 15min of exercising with my case and I had vrm+cpu+gpu+gpu active backplate+chipset 6 blocks they all had bubbles and it seemed to block airflow but once they were gone everything was fine and my temps good
Lower TDP is a niche that will find its customers. Now if somebody makes an even lower 350W version with 50% power target up and down I might even buy a 4090. I want an out of the box efficient one that can be tweaked if needed. I just don't want a pre-overclocked one that I need tone down with software. Hate where we have come, for 200-300 Mhz more we consume 50% more power out of the box.
Haven’t found a card yet that you can’t flash with a Gigabyte bios. Afaik, the gigabyte bios is the only 600w card with only 1 HDMI. I have the Gaming trio x, which is a 3 split, 450w card plus a 3% target. It’s hitting the roof constantly with any load. I simply used the gigabyte bios and the card now boosts all the way to 570W without hitting the roof. However, for a mesely 300mhz extra on the core, it’s really pointless, but i firmly believe that constantly hammering the limit causes micro stuttering and uneven and sometimes unstable fps.
I'd say it's mostly for protection from leaks/drips in your water-cooling (as well as aesthetics) but there is some SLIGHT cooling/longevity benefit, mostly on the VRM components/capacitors/GPU die's solder joints, albeit minimal with how thick the pads are (and the fact they're probably the 3-5 W/mk pads that all GPU vendors use for their extreme squishiness). but the 3090 just NEEDED it because of the GDDR6x memory on the back which would easilly go to 105c and thermal throttle/degrade without a backplate
tbh I don't want a GPU to draw more power than 450W! The form factor is perfect for the build I have in mind right now and having a prefitted waterblock means you are not going to void any warranty
What are the chances INNO3D realised early on that there was something wrong with Nvidia's 16 pin adapter and decided to play it safe by limiting the power target and using their own adapter with only three 8-pin cables required?
I was planning to buy this card! So glad it wasn't available at launch and I went for the Gigabyte Gaming OC instead. This card is 0% brutal, it's just a nerfed reference board with a locked power target 🤮 At least the coil whine isn't too bad though.
This can’t be Roman’s first time watercooling…right? The way he’s talking about the water flow in the block due to a bubble that needs to be removed makes it seem like it’s the first time he’s seeing that…
Did you not run the tests with the OC applied? Because this one got to 3ghz too, and the ram might OC better than the master because it’s running cooler. I think the performance would be more similar than you might think. Also keep in mind it’s drawing 33% less power when OCd and 50% less power stock for only an 8% performance loss. I think if you were to replace all the pads with your thermal grizzly ones and use Liquid Metal on the die you could lower the power target quite a bit and still be at FE performance. It’s bonkers to think that at 300w a watercooled 4090 has nearly 4x the performance of a 3070ti which is also 300W
Powertarget could make sense considering news about burning/melting the power connector. Considering it has no direct airflow on pcb. This could be very well intentional...
This would be perfext for my itx build. Though I CANT BUY IT, not available. I have considered using 750w psu so the 450W limit is perfect. I dont have to lower the power my self.
1 D5 pump is good if you manage to gett all the air out from the system, I do have my self MORA radiator, i needed to install another D5 pump and the air moves out of the system right away without a issue, i will say 2 D5 pumps is needed when alot of radiators or big is installed for the system + with increase flow =Lower temps
"201 % commited to a 100% power target" - gold.
400w is 90% and less than target 450w. ((
LOL
Ummmm ….. 201% ….. I divide by 100% power target …. Multiply by the (calculations in the background 😂🤣🤪)…… so they’re 100% committed to roughly a 50.5% power target of 450w = a 226’ish watt GPU 😒😏🤪
I swear der Baur looks like Jimmy neutron all grown up
you're right haha
i think about this EVERY TIME
He got to launch a mini rocket! 🤣
Haha now you say it
He do looks like him
Hahaha agreed
I think the power target is a problem based on the description on the product from the vendor. I personally would have been disappointed that I couldn't raise the power Target. It looks like a really great product, but if I water cools something I want to be able to push it to the bleeding edge, not just stock.
2% increase in performance 🤣
indeed... let's hope for a bios update
@@jakeoshay against a 4090fe with only 3 power cables!
The 4090 already IS at the bleeding edge, stock.
Nvidia screwed up tbh, if they released it with lower power limits, maybe it wouldn't be spontaneously combusting all over the place, and OCers would still be able to enjoy the illusion that they're "squeezing more out of it".
@@nekrovulpes
The 4090 isn't melting. The NVIDIA 8-pin to 16-pin adapter is.
I wanted to get this as it was the only stock waterblock version out there. Not anymore, especially due to the high price. It's a lot cheaper to produce this card than a 2kg air-cooled one, but still this one is ~2300eur. This, plus the low quality VRM and the lack of overclocking potential makes me wonder what were they thinking with this. It's brutal indeed.
I wish he discussed price, because I was thinking this would be cheaper and then they would release a better unlocked card for 200 more
Great review. Regarding the waterflow @3:48. It is because the air cannot get out and wants up. You should take the card out and manoeuvre it around so you get all the air out 🙂
Get a reference card with unlocked power limit and swap coolers ;) Then you could test that cooler on a card with bigger power targets..
does the Galax 4090 SG allow power limit unlock? I saw those world record from this card out there
ya its not like cards are sitting in stock thanks to bots
@@leonmah Those cards probably had PCB mods to allow them to overcome power and voltage limits. Nvidia is locking down on the 4090 so they don't lose sales when they shove 4090 Ti out the door with a 600W max TBP, even with the sliders cranked up on max.
Excellent information and thank you. That power limited "water blocked" makes absolutely no sense to me. My takeaway is my pre-ordered EK block should offer excellent and stable performance.
For what model of card?
@@stevenross-watt8640 .. Gigabyte OC and it definitely has the 600W ability. All I could buy, but surprisingly, it turned out to be pretty good.
@@DJaquithFL I managed to buy exactly the same card at rrp from gumtree (like craigslist) the owner had a founders card lined up and hadn't even opened the gigabyte box so just needed his money back. I'm very happy with it. Its a bit plasticky compared to the ultra solid 3090fe I had before but the performance is great. I'm also waiting on my ek waterblock but have the gigabyte card vertical mounted in a corsair 7000d case. No strain or bends on the power connector and plenty fresh air. Happy days. Cheers.
@@stevenross-watt8640 .. I tried to get the ASUS ROG OC but it was taken off NewEgg's in-house MSRP and replaced by a mystery reseller for 2X the price just prior to launch. The FE was my second choice but it was sold out by BOTS on BestBuy faster than a refreshed screen. I only paid MSRP I could have bought 2 but that made no sense to me.
The only negative is that EK isn't listing / selling an Active back plate for it.
Anyway you too Good Luck!!!
@@DJaquithFL interesting. You may already know but the 4090 doesn't have vram on the rear of the pcb like the 3090 did so it doesn't need an active backplate. You may want one for your own cool tech project side but so far I have seen zero need for one and the video here showing that the backplate is just warm concludes that for me. I'm also feeling the gaming oc air cooling is so good that I'll not really see a benefit from wayercooling. Mines holding 60°c and let's assume 45°c to 50°c on water. As much as I pike custom waterloops losing my 4 year warranty for 10°c is not making sense at the moment. You thinking just do it anyway? :)
The IChill Frostbite WAS my intended card until I saw the price and (non) availability on release day. Bought an Asus TUF OC instead. I would have been REALLY pissed to see only a 450W limit on a waterblock! My previous card was an Aorus 3090 Xtreme that I fitted with a Bykski waterblock. The TUF OC 4090 seems to run so cool as to not be worth watercooling.
Did you get TUF anywhere near MSRP? I was hoping to snatch one of these since they were supposedly same price as FE but not in the UK... cheapest start at 2000 which is too much (I've planned grabbing TUF and slapping Eiswolf on it which at MSRP would be actually cheaper than 2000...)
@@Micromation The non OC TUF was indeed close to the FE on pricing but simply unavailable (like the FE). Got the TUF OC for 2100 inc VAT which was list price. Expensive, but at least I had the card next day.
I dont understand why people pay this amount of money for space heaters
I installed an Alphacool Eisblock GPX waterblock on my Inno3D RTX 4090 X3 OC on the first day of RTX 4090 launch, essentially got a RTX 4090 iChill Frostbite. I am impressed with both thermal and acoustic performance, and my RAM kit is also cooler than before as it no longer needs to take hot air exhausted from VGA cooler.
Wish you'd mention the water temperature too. It's very hard to know how good it is without knowing the delta between water temperature and GPU temperature
In the german version he mentions 26°C water temperature with a big Mora.
Honestly for the price (even if we don't consider the maketing), a locked power target card with only a Reference pcb is not fine.
Great review anyway!
ps your cat has orange beautiful eyes :D
i usually keep card out of slot for water filling . this way to turn it upside down and all around to get the air out.
Sure do love seeing them air bubbles inside the block itself. Really aids in the dissipation of that heat. Please tell me you got rid of it eventually?
Respectfully, I think we probably *do* need to talk about this board's power circuitry because Inno3D seem to have gone very barebones for what is presumably their flagship 4090 - I see 14 GPU phases out of a possible 20, 3 memory phases out of 4 and multiple missing caps. I can't make out the exact models used but if this is an X3 with an Alphacool block then those are 55A phases. Which makes the power circuitry even worse than the 16x55-fitted Palit GameRock that Buildzoid tore down (and then tore apart) a couple of weeks back, noting 16% transients.
Wish he talked about that in dept
Does that matter when they're so well-cooled? Also you can't raise the power target.
@@Sasasala386 he probably will
By 16% transients you mean the popular "transient spikes" in power draw? If yes then I believe 16% is a super good result, isn't it? I mean 30xx series had transient spikes of like 150% or something like that. I guess thay I probably miss here something badly, would be nice if you could expain.
@@sokolinek Transients are much lower on 4000 series than on 3000 series. Better engineered 4090s have as low as 5% spikes, so 16% is pretty bad comparatively. Although in the general sense, even 16% is fine.
Seems strange to bother making a waterblock and limit it to stock TDP
From the looks of it, they cut down the VRM.
@@krusic22 yeah looks like its missing 10-11 phases
Sometimes it's less about drag racing the thing and more about making it not be a breeze block dangling off your GPU slot. This potentially makes SFF 4090 builds possible without going stupid with dremels.
it was exactly the same with the inno3D RTX 3090 ICHILL Frostbite, the only way to unlock the power limit was to install a mod bios (or bios from another supplier)
I think for coil whine detection, it would be good to set all the fans in the pc to a specific level, and have a mic taped near the vrm, and look for changes in audio frequency when in desktop and when in games of different frame rates.
in the first place im not sure how feasible it is for gpu manufacturer to eliminate coil whine, but usually reviewers only points it out if their sample has terrible whining
phone apps can do this pretty well, so thats a easy way to find whining too
for fixing it, i think they'd need heavier duty wires or a different frequency
I like that they sell this card with a custom water block, I hope to see much more of this.
So easy just add the card to your excising water cooling loop and you are god to go.👍
Well yeah, you would need to drain the loop, put paper tissues all over your PC, put this thing in and the tubes as well, fill the loop, run it for hours to get air bubbles out and make sure you don't have leaks (would be very strange to have leaks suddenly if you just put a pre-blocked GPU in, though), and test it to see if you are good to go. Not exactly like changing an air cooled card, but still something I'd prefer as I have a custom loop. Keeps me from upgrading though, the hassle is real!
I think the 450W hard target actually might be suitable for me as I only have 850W PSU, would not want to risk it. However, instead of upgrading from 6900xt, I think I'll just build a new system from scratch and give the existing one to the wife for gaming. We'll see if Liquid Devil 7900XTX changes my mind. It would have to have lower transient spikes than 6900xt for me to upgrade.
@@MadViking82 I was not recommending others to get a custom water loop. But i have one my self and changing to that chard would be both easy and fun to me.
You can get fittings that will stop the water from spilling when you disconnect them, then a little tissue paper is all you need.
I just use a drain valve at the lowest point of my loop, and i have no problem bleeding my loop, turning the water pump on and tilting the tower a few times from side to side is enough in my case. It would take me more time than changing an air card but it would not be a huge pain for me.
An AIO card would be much worse in my case. And I won't have wasted a big air-cooler for nothing and having to disassemble the card, find a card and a water block that fits together and it should be cheaper cause no air cooler is needed.
Thank you for checking for coil whine...so appreciated
my hunch on the power limit is that they realised raising it doesn't really make much sense since the die's limited by voltage anyway, not power. once you replace the stock thermal pads/paste, add an undervolt and overclock the memory, 450W is probably the sweetspot/cap for reliability&stability while watercooled (potentially ~500W being the absolute limit?). plus then you don't get supplied with nVidia's dodgy 600w 12pin adapter but we didn't get a good look at the one supplied so it's hard to say if it doesn't use a similar technique.
maybe this limit will be lifted in future (either OEM update or modding or flashing a competitor's BIOS if anyone else used the reference design), but considering how some of the phases are unpopulated I wouldn't hold my breath; however, as TechPowerup hasn't released a teardown to view what components they used just yet, the quality of the components used may offset the unpopulated phases as it IS the reference design which was probably specced to use the lowest-quality/cheapest components available (i.e reference 20*40A phases totals 800Amps, vs for example custom 14*60A phases totalling 840Amps)
The grub screw style plugs seem to have been developed for alphacool's new HPE radiators, the idea being that they sit flush with the surface of the rad caps.
They've had them for years, and yes they were designed for the rads. Alphacool radiators(which have 2 or 3 ports per tank) in the 360/480/520 versions weren't sitting flush with whatever metal you were mounting them to due to the unused(mounting plate side) port plugs sticking out.
This is ridiculous ! Thank you for pointing that out !
These reviews are awesome. I have been most excited about these water-cooled AIB cards because it should reduce cost and waste compared to buying a air-cooled card and replacing the air cooler with a waterblock. However the limited power limit on this model is a huge disappointment.
Precisely the card I was planning to buy. Thank you so much for posting. Also prefer the lower power limit and running the card in its efficient region.
I have an Inno3D Frostbite 3080 and had to replace the waterblock with one from EK as it simply did not cool the memory. I do not rate Alphacool gpu blocks
Can't go wrong with EK block, my 3080 ti rarely goes over 50'C
I've got an EK ASUS TUF/Strix 4090 block on pre-order, it was nice to see how a custom block handles the power of a 4090. Also, the size of the card with a block attached is greatly appreciated. I had to move my Singularity pump/res to the very front of a O11D XL to fit the air-cooled TUF 4090 OC (vertically mounted). Once the EK block is installed, it'll bring the overall length of the card down from 348.2mm to 260mm (about 20mm shorted than a 1080TI block).
PS. The plugs are also used in the Alphacool v2 NexXxoS radiators but don't try using them in v1's. I ended up screwing one right inside a 45mm X-Flow radiator _never to return_ (a stop collar at the base of the thread is required to be able to use them). At least it doesn't rattle with the pump going :)
Yhea. Really looking forward to my EK ASUS TUF/Strix 4090, as it's going to be much smaller than my previous card while still being a 4090.
If the case stood in its vertical configuration as tower, the air bubbles would float against the water block which would interfere with heat transfer.
With all due respect, if the reviewer was anybody else, I'd cry out loud this is his first rodeo. I totally agree with comments regarding marketing BS. But:
- It breaks my heart to see all those water bubbles. Seriously, a little shake for a while would have made the cooling loop a lot better.
- I happened to have an opportunity to get this card - regardless of insane price, I know, I know... - and I'm more than satisfied, because:
- Simply one-click overclock with GeForce Experience OC feature makes it boost up to 2910 MHz well within the 450 W envolepe and moderate thermals. I'm impressed and I'm happy.
- With this card increasing power limit to 600 W would yield maybe another 90-100 Mhz, which is futile if you think of added power to performance ratio.
Useful video for those considering the card and a wireview, inno3d don't share any pictures showing the connector orientation.
thanks for the video! Any readings on VRAM temps?
For a sff itx build this would be a killer GPU to have ….. and let’s face it, another potential 100-150watts of heat and massive power draw, for an extra few fps is pointless for many.
but ... does this statement of "+150W for meaningless +fps" also apply to choosing a 4080 instead?
If I had to market this card, I would use terms like "sophisticated and sleek", "for the best cooling in a compact design" and other terms like that. If I had the budget for a 4090 build I would not care for 2% performance. I would however very much care for the aesthetics it has and the good temperature. This card can be run in a compact case, and there is nothing I like better then the idea of having the fastest components available at their rated speeds in as small a formfactor as possible. Compact just looks more neat, so yeah.
Snatched one at 1900€, expecting a nice UV+OC resulting in a mild 3-4% performance over stock while having stable clocks due to low temps. This also has 3 year warranty, so that's a nice addition.
I believe these new alphacool blocks are *chromium* plated instead of nickel. At least that’s what they announced in their marketing a couple weeks ago
that would explain the "better" cnc machining
But why? It's not a huge difference but there'll be slightly more corrosion.
Brilliant video! It makes it very clear that RTX4090 cards are MUCH better if custom water cooled (able to constantly boost because of much lower temperatures, lower power consumption, much smaller size GPU so it can fit in a lot more cases, etc. & so outperforms founders edition in every way), & as pre-water blocked GPUs by the manufacturer they remove any drawbacks (no e-waste from throwing away the cooling system for air cooling, no stress from having to switching over a GPU with the risk of breaking it & the damage not being covered by warranty, & they come with full manufacturer's warranty).
The INNO3D RTX 4090 ICHILL Frostbite, which comes pre-installed with water blocks, although it does outperform the RTX4090 founders GPU, does not push the limits of the performance available with this configuration (e.g. it only comes with a power cable for max 450W), so it would be good to see other manufacturers do something similar, but who have tweaked the reference board from Nvidia to push for maximum performance, well beyond what's possible on an air cooled card, like the overclocked ROG STRIX, being sold with custom water blocks preinstalled as well. Take note ASUS!
I actually had a gpu destroyed because of bad contact and overheat of the power stages..not the gpu, and gigantic aircoolers would interfere with my wc reservoir so for me it was this or nothing (asus tuf+ekwb is an option but also the most scalped model on the market, a shop had 10 I clicked refresh 3s later they were gone the next day 8/10 were on 2nd hand market "brand new unopened" one guy alone had 4 and was even proud to say he scalped them from this particular website, since then no shop ever had stock in my country
i have the 4080 version of that card.. i flashed a Colorfull Neptune 470w bios onto it and now its actually a very good card :D
i did have in the past did get a INNO3D iChill 980Ti, that card was really great, 20% OC, no noise, temp really low, i didn't even hear the pump
There was probably only availability for the ref board water block, so they had to use that board which probably has a lower/stock power limit.
pretty much goes with this product, as I wrote as comment ekwb 3090 and aours waterforce had only 2 connectors but bioses up to 390w which is still only +40w above minimum...for the 4090 we're talking up to +150w that's something else and it doesn't come free the only proper 600w (just not flash whatever and burn your card) have longer pcb this is one is 3.5cm shorter than even the FE with an ekwb waterblock
Shouldn't the 12VHPWR to 3x8pin adapter guarantee up to 525w just by rating? (150+150+150+75)
The adapter only delivers 525W. But, the fee should still accept them. For which Power Limit is set. The bad thing is that it is blocked from raising even to 600 watts. I'm not even talking about wanting higher.
Absolutely stunning card. I really like the trend of "smaller" wb cards. Tho the 450w powertarget is limiting i stick with the 99% of users who won't use ist anyways. Setting the powertarget to ~70% should yield basically the most efficient card as to date..
The price is just not there... I mean, it's literally 4090 with slapped Alphacool water block on it. It has no business being as expensive as they list it for :O You could grab FE or any other cheapest version of the card, slap Alphacool block on it yourself and voila.. or you could go with their AIO Eiswolf which is basically block with pump and 360 rad and it still would be cheaper...
It's not small, look how insanely wide it is when you account for the water in/outlets!
Limiting your fps and res and gfx settings to what you can notice would be far more "efficient".... But you don't buy a V8 to pootle around at 2000rpms do you. These cards are unjustifiable excess on every metric. (and I know what excess looks like, I have a modded watercooled DTR "laptop" capable of drawing >600W from the wall xD)
Not a judgement, just an objective observation, people are free to buy what they want for their reasons, so long as the reasons are sound and they're not deceiving themselves or others
Its no doubt classed as 'Brutal' due to damage it will cause to the purchasers wallet.
kitty! ^^
also, does the water flow change when the card is not upright like that?
very nice question, would love to see further investigations on that.
I have one of the inno3d X3s, in my limited testing I have flashed it with several bios from other vendors, can confirm that apart from fan control going somewhat wonkey you can move the power target up to 600 by flashing either the Asus or Gigabyte roms, or going to 530 with MSI or 500 with Palit, all have worked fine but temps are not fantastic and performance of moving up to those is hardly worth it on Air for the power draw, the way of a 4090 owner seems to be to limit it to 300ish and get 95% of the performance for much less power and heat. but thats just my opinion.
what bios have you tested to be the best? i have the ichill x3
@@mrvicco Honestly, I have the Palit 500w one (111% power target max) on mine but I have it limited to 65% which is getting around 300w. At least the fan control isn't screwy on this bios like it is with the 600w ones. But in truth, I wouldn't bother flashing it unless you specificly want a space heater.
My card isn't exactly a golden sample, without pushing the voltage I can only get to 2980 stable, memory isn't horrible though, +1525 before error correction or artifacts kick in .
When I set it to 500 I still hit power limit though when using the above settings in some games or furmark. But coming from 1080ti (sli when it worked) to this I'm more than happy playing at 4k with 300w draw.
engaging with this excellent comment so more people see it.
@@Xfuri0us1 I have alphacool water block so if I flash the 600w one maybe I can oc better than stock
Maybe it because there's unpopulated pads that they had to limit the power and no more than that
unpopulated VoltageRegulationModule might be part of the reason, yea
EK are releasing a RTX 4090 founders edition GPU water cooling "kit" which includes BOTH a front active and back active back plate; it's called the "EK-Quantum Vector² FE RTX 4090 D-RGB ABP Set - Nickel + Plexi". From the pics on the EK website with the RGB, it looks like the best-looking GPU I have ever seen! And having seen the results of the INNO3D RTX 4090 ICHILL Frostbite, which comes pre-installed with only an active water block on the front and has no tweaks beyond the reference NVidia board, it still outperforms any other RTX4090 so long as you give it enough radiator space and big enough PSU, so the card constantly boosts to the max because of the thermal and power headroom!
Could you please reach out to EK and see if you can get a pre-release to test for us? Would love to see a video of you reviewing a founders card with this new EK active blocks and compare it to a INNO3D RTX 4090 ICHILL Frostbite card in one of your water loops!
Thanks for mentioning coil whine.
Love anything AlphaCool, my whole 2x 360 rad loop is all AlphaCool, cpu block, and gpu block. The price is far less than EK in similar parts but the quality is still just as good.
Inno3D use the 3 cable adapter on all of their cards it seems.
So either they're a lower teir vender that doesn't get the higher capability PCB designs from Nvidia?
Or they're like MSI and put in the bare minimum on their water cooled cards.
I like the smaller size for a mATX system, would be great for going to trade shows as an off site rendering system.
Always nice if the emperor of the house, aka the cat, decides to help out 😁
Good to know I'm not the only one who has cat's that like to help out.
Lol the cat looks entranced by the waterflow :)
The air bubbles in the water block are terrible. Having the pump push fluid vertically up uses the most pump head. I can't give my comment that it is a fail because the majority of systems are in cases. To regain head have the pump level with the block, and shorten tube lengths, and reduce bends. If that is done and there are still bubbles a booster pump would be needed and at that point I would say the cooler is a fail.
This whole 12VHPWR power cable situation seems to be a bit of a pain. I have an RTX 4090 that I wanted to clean up the cabling on from stock paired with a Corsair HX1000. During my search Corsair offers a 600W 12VHPWR Type-4 power cable but it only includes 2 8pin power leads. So it seems that Corsairs Type-4 power supplies are delivering 300 watts per 8-pin which seems like it will only further to add to the confusion. Not sure if anyone has covered this already and what your thoughts are.
while waiting the corsair cable for my HX1200i I ordered 2 different same design ones from aliexpress (4weeks shipping for me) I have the instruments required I'll bend them as required in my case power off then test them, jayztwocents actually made a video about the corsair cable fyi he has one, from his guesses they seem to have used a single thick copper wire or something he noticed the cable was stiffer than usual
Maybe the power limit has been added exactly to reduce the chances of coil whine, or the power stages and circuitry quality was such that going higher would be detrimental to overall card stability, thus the limit in power and just 3-pronged splitter.
G'day Marcin, yeah compared to FE 20 + 3 they have cut quite a few Core VRM Components going down to 14 + 3 so that seems to be a sensible assumption,
also it would be interesting to get a buildzoid PCB Breakdown so we can know his thoughts on the quality & performance of the components too.
That power limit is a little weird but as you said in normal operation day to day i end up anyway in undervolting and as you saw us in the vid, it's still hitting over 3GHz with that low power consumption so it's fine for me ;) It's also the only one on the market with preinstalled waterblock meaning no warranty voliation like we do on changing normal air cooled card into water cooled one (sad EVGA is no more). I've also passed on Frostbite at first due to high price but today (i don't know why) they dropped from about 2134 EUR to 1852 EUR (many shops dropped it's price like this now) while the cheapest aircooled 4090 is now for 1617 EUR in Poland so frostbite including warranty i now an interesting choice :) Thanks for the review, i may but it now :)
201% comitted to a 100% power target. Nailed it!
Oooo A grub screw with an O-ring. That is a game changing bit of brilliant innovation. That it definitely worth a patent.... said no body at all (apart from some patent office unfortunately)
Get your asus strix OC a waterblock and overclock it ;) I'd like to look forward to that.
4:00 To solve this problem, install the card in the motherboard slot and not upright on a riser cable...
That's a very cute white fluffy "flannel" for soaking up water spills !
Those temps are impressive. My 3080Ti Hydro Copper cards sit around 60C at full tilt pulling between 300-350W. Important to note though this is in a 30C ambient - drop that room temp 10C and the cards go down 10C as well!!! What was your room ambient? The same is true when you go bigger radiator = lower temps.
No experience with their blocks but I am using alphacool rads - their 80mm thick rads in push/pull do an amazing job for pulling heat away. I have five of them in my system cooling four 3080Ti's and a 5960X. Best use case so far was 15C delta in a very warm 35C summer room 😎
Thanks for looking at this card, its been on my wish list, and now removed due to the locked power limit. What is the point of going to the trouble of custom loop when they do this? Idiots...
the point is to move the cooling to the rad to the front or the top of the case so it will fit into a normal sized ATX case, not one of the stupid huge E-ATX jumbo 20KG cases
@@smartmonkey777 my loop has been created so as to allow overclocking and move higher heat than stock. I was after one of these cards as a slot in replacement for soft and hard modded 3090 drawing 600w already. I appreciate your point on size, I guess you're right, it's not why I was interested in this card though.
I had this type of outlet/inlet screws on my 5700XT and man..i can tell you one of them was not sealing no matter how much tighten it was. I was lucky because i found it with my pressure tester before i fill water but man i was disapointed. There must be some manufacture defect on the sealing surface because i had to switch to more traditional type of screw that seal on main area of the block.
Amazing results however the newest 4090 cannot run some 4k games on full settings so what are we really debating is it really that powerful or should people just play 1080p on full settings.
Love your cat!
Great card to warm your room this winter!
How can Alphacool patent the standard stopper screw? That is how the textbook sais to do it with o-ring sealed screw. You seal on bottom of hole and use rest of hole for threads for screws.
Your bleed screws on a breakline assembly takes this a step further by sealing metal-to-metal with no o-ring in bottom and with self sealed threads for a elegant bleed assembly. The principle is still the same.
I'm sure those water blocks are cheaper to manufacture than those massive air-coolers on ani othe gpu
Thanks for mentioning coil whine!
G'day Roman, Makita & Shiek,
Nice to see something a bit different to the usual ASUS, Gigabyte, FE & MSI reviews,
🤔I wonder if it is possible to flash the FE BIOS to the Frostbite so you get the extended Power Limit? plus if that is possible will the Adapter being 3 or 4 8pin PCIe still make a difference to the Power Target?
Ps it would be cool if you could get some HiRes photos to Buildzoid for a PCB Breakdown 😁
You can't flash the FE bios, (ask me how I know) but the other vendor cards work. The 3-8Pin they send out give the card the go-ahead when running a 600w bios to go all the way.
@@Xfuri0us1 Thanks
Hi @@Xfuri0us1, can you tell me which Bios from other vendor that you are using and how can I download it? Thank you!
Does this mean that a Strix or even Founders Edition 4090 with a waterblock you mount yourself will overclock higher because of the power limit of this card?
Should have pre-filled the block before connecting the lines, pretty sure that air isn't supposed to be in there... The side channels probably do not need as much flow and may rely on laminar flow at junction to move the water in there, which won't work if it's not full of water...
Weird that GPU-Z did not show memory temps. Did you try HWInfo? Does that card not come with mem temp sensors?
I've always said this about EVGA and Asus using stock with block
Overclockers UK had a small note on this card on their website about 2 weeks ago. Suggesting it's price would be in the region of £2600. Yikes.
It doesn't even make sense because it's standard water block from Alphacool... I mean, it's cheap - the AIO (Eiswolf) for GPU costs 250 for block, integrated pump and 360 rad... half that for block alone that Inno3D comes with. Overclockers are just a bunch of scalpers, really...
I pre-ordered one from Proshop for €2299
Yikes indeed....
wow. i know times and prices change and increase but jesus, i bought my evga 1080ti hydro copper for £799 brand new from scan when it was "new out"
@@sasbando Nvidia and AMD both now know, after 2019, that gamers are impatient, fickle and will pay thousands for this year's toy GPU. So why not charge thousands for this year's toy GPU?
Don't like it, don't buy it.
Yes coil whine finally someone talking about the real issues with cards. (Excluding the fire hazards)
I had the ichill x4 3090 and added the same waterblock myself, now the 4090 with the waterblock included, The quality is top notch. I love the the fact that it doesn't go higher than 450 watts. The performance increase is minimal, and the extra heat and powerusage for those few extra FPS is useless. That said, because it's running so cool, you can get it stable at around 2950 mhz. Perfect in my opinion, nobody is going to notice the difference between 2950 or 3050/3100.
Regarding the waterflow problem, I had the same issue, just holding the card horizontal for a while will press out the air and the flow will be good afterwards. You can fit it vertical after that, and it'll keep flowing. Just make sure all the air is out of the system.
Flash that with the gaming OC bios and use a 4x8pin connector and it just flies..
Just don't put your faith on the 16pin power cable..lmao
I'm relieved this is a nothingburger pre-built watercooled card are usually tame for example the EKWB-ASUS 3090 only had 2 connectors and a 366w power limit which is better than 350 but not much, the aorus waterforce had 370-390 the inno3d 370w, I didn't expect more than reference PCB (which opens the possibility of an EKWB if necessary but clearly not) and the 450w is low but since efficiency tests show it's already dumb I couldn't care for more and...that's the thing who buys them 1) you managed to grab one 2) you want to keep your warranty (outside na you touch a screw you're on your own) 3) the length it's 200m so 33% smaller than most other 3090...even watercooled (check ekwb blocks lengths) my previous 3090 330mm long destroyed the perfect bottom-top airflow of my lian li dynamic XL m.2 p.s. not sure your comment on the liquid flow is relevant with so many bubbles :P you know all you need to do is tilt and shake your pc in all directions and they will go right ? doesn't prove the airflow will be better but at least the block will be filled with liquid that mixes with the rest, the fact that bubbles are static means nothing that's what they do they cut and block the waterflow trust me I had zero bubbles left after 15min of exercising with my case and I had vrm+cpu+gpu+gpu active backplate+chipset 6 blocks they all had bubbles and it seemed to block airflow but once they were gone everything was fine and my temps good
Lower TDP is a niche that will find its customers. Now if somebody makes an even lower 350W version with 50% power target up and down I might even buy a 4090. I want an out of the box efficient one that can be tweaked if needed. I just don't want a pre-overclocked one that I need tone down with software. Hate where we have come, for 200-300 Mhz more we consume 50% more power out of the box.
I like the discussion you give, and also your cat :)
Haven’t found a card yet that you can’t flash with a Gigabyte bios. Afaik, the gigabyte bios is the only 600w card with only 1 HDMI. I have the Gaming trio x, which is a 3 split, 450w card plus a 3% target. It’s hitting the roof constantly with any load. I simply used the gigabyte bios and the card now boosts all the way to 570W without hitting the roof. However, for a mesely 300mhz extra on the core, it’s really pointless, but i firmly believe that constantly hammering the limit causes micro stuttering and uneven and sometimes unstable fps.
Yes! I found the kitten in this version too. All is good with the video now. 😏
does the back side of the 4090 benefit from extra cooling? i know the 3090 had a water block you could get to cool it instead of a backplate
I'd say it's mostly for protection from leaks/drips in your water-cooling (as well as aesthetics) but there is some SLIGHT cooling/longevity benefit, mostly on the VRM components/capacitors/GPU die's solder joints, albeit minimal with how thick the pads are (and the fact they're probably the 3-5 W/mk pads that all GPU vendors use for their extreme squishiness). but the 3090 just NEEDED it because of the GDDR6x memory on the back which would easilly go to 105c and thermal throttle/degrade without a backplate
Do people even exist that is running a custom loop and dont overclock????
King turbo noobs
tbh I don't want a GPU to draw more power than 450W! The form factor is perfect for the build I have in mind right now and having a prefitted waterblock means you are not going to void any warranty
Just chiming in that I, too, care about coil whine. It's been the bane of several "silent" PC builds over the years.
What are the chances INNO3D realised early on that there was something wrong with Nvidia's 16 pin adapter and decided to play it safe by limiting the power target and using their own adapter with only three 8-pin cables required?
More likely they limited the power target to save money with 16 phase gpu power delivery
I was planning to buy this card! So glad it wasn't available at launch and I went for the Gigabyte Gaming OC instead.
This card is 0% brutal, it's just a nerfed reference board with a locked power target 🤮
At least the coil whine isn't too bad though.
This can’t be Roman’s first time watercooling…right? The way he’s talking about the water flow in the block due to a bubble that needs to be removed makes it seem like it’s the first time he’s seeing that…
Did you not run the tests with the OC applied? Because this one got to 3ghz too, and the ram might OC better than the master because it’s running cooler. I think the performance would be more similar than you might think. Also keep in mind it’s drawing 33% less power when OCd and 50% less power stock for only an 8% performance loss. I think if you were to replace all the pads with your thermal grizzly ones and use Liquid Metal on the die you could lower the power target quite a bit and still be at FE performance. It’s bonkers to think that at 300w a watercooled 4090 has nearly 4x the performance of a 3070ti which is also 300W
Liquid metal on a GPU is fucking dumb. It does not help in the way you think it does. Dont use LM on a GPU.
To put that 300W in slightly more perspective, my OC'd GTX970 burns 266W...
Powertarget could make sense considering news about burning/melting the power connector. Considering it has no direct airflow on pcb. This could be very well intentional...
4:15 look at Shiek watching the water cooled GPU lol …. Such intense scrutinising going on 😏🙄
Keep petting cat on camera, my cat appreciates the reminders to pet him too
Spec on their website: 3x PCIe 8-pin cables (adapter in box) OR 450 W or greater PCIe Gen 5 cable. Odd.
This would be perfext for my itx build. Though I CANT BUY IT, not available. I have considered using 750w psu so the 450W limit is perfect. I dont have to lower the power my self.
Your cat is always so chill.
Which one of his two cats is chill, though ? )))
I like how most der8auer videos are in part cat petting videos.
the way pronounce alu mini um - vs standard english is alum inum - europeans typically say it as alu mini um vs western english alum inum
Thanks Roman for your Excelent Work. 👍💪
1 D5 pump is good if you manage to gett all the air out from the system, I do have my self MORA radiator, i needed to install another D5 pump and the air moves out of the system right away without a issue, i will say 2 D5 pumps is needed when alot of radiators or big is installed for the system + with increase flow =Lower temps