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EK Water Blocks TITAN Full Cover Block Kit Review

Cooling/VGA & Other Cooling by leeghoofd @ 2013-07-18

The Nvidia TITAN card is one serious monster gaming graphics card. Maximum performance awaits you if you are able to pay the atmospheric price tag. For those that want the fastest single GPU graphics card at the moment, this is the right one for you. But it's not all roses here for Nvidia's fastest GPU. The TITAN card is seriously limited by an average power design, allowing almost no extra headroom for that little extra crunching power. Secondly the stock heatsink is also running on its toes to keep the card just below throttling temperature. The latter is where watercooling comes to the rescue. Slovenian EK Waterblocks was so kind to send us one of their full cover block TITAN versions bundled with the backplate. A newer XL version of this full cover block also has popped up in the EK online shop. Time to unpack one of EK's marvels.

Conclusion

nVIDIA's TITAN is the world's fastest single GPU card, a real powerhouse however for the enthusiasts the card has got several flaws. The reference cooler design is acceptable, but that's where it all ends. While our card just got up to 79°C under load, monitored via GPU-Z, increasing the clocks over a certain point, decreased the card's performance. Meaning the card's build in safety throttling mechanism was activated. Secondly, the below average VRM design limits the voltage you can feed the GPU to unleash extra performance. Sadly for the latter zombifying your 1000 dollar card is the only option.

To counteract the temperature throttling, improving the cooling performance is the way to go. For the daily setups this EK FC might be overkill. Though if you want the best option to cool down your behemoth graphics card, then watercooling your card provides the ultimate solution.

The EK FC improved the cooling by over 40°C versus the reference cooler under extreme load conditions, plus unleashing some extra overclocking potential of our specific under performing ASUS TITAN card.

Slovenian EK waterblocks has several TITAN full cover blocks in their lineup, from the SE variants to the full blown XL versions. Choose between copper, nickel plated or Acetal versions, all of them living up to the high quality label of EK products. The looks and machining are excellent, the installation couldn't be easier and the cooling performance is top notch. What more can one expect !

PROS:

craftmanship
cooling performance
ease of installation

CONS:

no cooling paste included

Thanks to Niko from EK WB for the EK FC TITAN and backplate

And the TONES.BE webshop for lending us one of their TITAN cards

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