Gigabyte announces water-cooled Geforce GTX 980 Waterforce

Closed water cooling packages had their big impact with processors and have recently become increasingly common on the often more heat-generating graphics cards. For this purpose, Gigabyte has previously released a mammoth package with no less than three water-cooled Geforce GTX 980 Ti and now unveils a more stripped-down solution for a wider audience.

The newcomer Gigabyte Geforce GTX 980 Waterforce is only a graphics card that is accompanied by a more modest cooling solution than before. Characteristic is the card’s grille-fitted cover, which reveals a water block for the graphics circuit GM204 itself and solid with aluminum and heat conduction pipes for surrounding components.

To dissipate the heat, this is connected to a 120 mm radiator with an associated fan, which is mounted in any 120 mm space in the chassis. According to Gigabyte, the solution will provide 38 percent lower temperatures than Nvidia’s standard cooler, this despite significantly increased clock frequencies from the factory.

The graphics card built around Nvidia’s Geforce GTX 980 has clock speeds of 1,228 and 1,329 MHz at base respective boost, to compare against 1,126 and 1,216 MHz for Nvidia’s reference design. This steps up a little more with an OC mode, which raises the frequencies to 1,253 and 1,354 MHz respectively. The graphics card’s 4 GB GDDR5 remains at the standard level 7,000 MHz.

When the Gigabyte Geforce GTX 980 Waterforce will be available in stores and at what price is not yet known.