this level of cooling is more
than enough and the maximum
overclock is not going to
increase further with any form
of liquid cooling. Be it you
use a custom loop or another
high end AIO kit. There is
a temperature difference
under load of course, but
what you should realize is
that the maximum overlock
for our particular CPU which
was 4.5GHz, remained
exactly the same. What did
improve though is the GPU
performance as shown in the
graphs.
What you should know is
unlike with the standard all
copper cooler that ships with
this graphics card. The FC
block for this GPU keeps the
GPU clock constant at
1430MHz regardless of the
benchmark, game or stress
test. With the standard cooler,
as brilliant as it is, GPU clocks
dip to 1417MHz in many
instances and when playing the
most taxing games with all
options enabled, this 1417MHz
may sometimes dip to
1406MHz and perhaps less as
shown by Furmark. This
happens with the fan speed set
at 50% and even at 100%
sometimes. The latter setting
being unbearable and not a
practical way to
operate the GPU for 24/7 use
even though it does maintain a
higher boost clock which is at
its lowest 1406MHz. In
contrast, when using the FC
block and the Predator, the
boost clock never fluctuates at
all, constantly at the optimum
clock of 1430MHz. This same
behaviour is exhibited when
overclocked as well, where the
GPU clock remained at
1550MHz with a maximum load
temperature of 44’C. Simply
astonishing performance
compared to the factory
shipped cooler where the test
would eventually crash.
Where it didn’t crash, it
resulted in a lowered GPU
clock throughout every test. In
a material way, the FC block
and Predator AIO have allowed
the test system to reach new
levels of performance
previously unattainable. As
stated earlier, these days AIO
kits do not improve CPU
performance, but GPUs such
as this one still benefit
tremendous