godgxjs
Could someone please comment on the loudness and temperature of the card? This comparison (Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Review Roundup - Performance Analysis, from bit-tech.net) has made me a bit worried about the evga card, mainly because they make it sound as if the quality of the card components isn't as good as the other 2 brands. I have never had a bad experience with evga which is why I decided to get their SSC GTX970 AXC 2.0 from newegg. Could someone also comment about the coil whine if any. Thanks.

I'm also wondering if the card will come with a backplate included or if evga will send us early adopters free backplates when available.
 
EDIT:
The coil whine coming from my gtx 970 SSC acx 2.0 is very low and not noticeable at all unless I put my ear next to the card. My temperatures are really good too. The highest temperature I have gotten even after overclocking the card is 62C. I am using a custom fan profile, but it doesn't get loud enough to be bothersome at all. 
The highest score I managed to achieve in Unigine Valley with my GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0 is 4724 (stable).
Settings:
Ultra
1920x1080 full screen
AA off
Overclock:
Power Limit: 110%
Core Clock: +120MHz
Memory Clock: +300MHz
Core Voltage: +87mV (This is just to make sure I am testing the card at its full potential)

The max temp I got was 62C using a custom fan profile. The max fan speed used was 72%, which wasn't loud enough to be bothersome. 

I will keep testing the card, as I am sure that I can still achieve slightly higher clocks for both the core and the memory. 
 
So far I'm very pleased with this card. I so hope EVGA give american customers the extended 5 years warranty and the backplate too. However, everyone has to realize that EU customers had to pay a higher price for their cards, which might be why EVGA is offering them some added value to their purchase.

godgxjs
Ok, since I was the one who started this thread I'm going to share my current opinions with everyone. My gtx 970 ssc axc 2.0 is coming tomorrow, and I have decided to give Evga the benefit of the doubt. I have always trusted this brand and it has never disappointed me before, and after much reading and deliberation I have decided to trust them again. Putting all the unfair criticism aside (witch hunt), there are few factual points to consider. The evga 970 axc cards are a bit louder and run a bit hotter than the competition. Now I'm not saying that it is because there are defects on the manufacturing or the design of the card. People who say this are just angry that the card didn't turn out to be as good as they wanted it to be, when compared to other brands. This does not mean that the card won't perform as it should or that it will malfunction or break based solely on its design. If that was the case, then it wouldn't have passed Nvidia Greenlight tests. Products that compete with each other have always been different. That's what makes competition possible and good for consumers. If you want the card with the lowest temperatures and the lowest noise then it seems the EVGA 970 isn't for you this time around. But that does not give anyone the right to say that EVGA is bad now or that the card has manufacturing defects, because that is way out of line. The engineers at EVGA decided that the design was good enough and that is why they produced it that way. They aren't always trying to figure out exactly what other brands are going to come out with in order to beat them in every single aspect of the card, because that is not how it works. They design a product, they make it, then they test it extensively, then they send it to Nvidia and they test it as well. They have been doing this for quite a while now, and they must have been doing something right because last time I checked, EVGA is probably the most reliable manufacturer of aftermarket Nvidia GPUs. So if it happens that this time, other manufacturers produced 970s with lower temperatures and noise (by a small margin), then so be it. I congratulate their design team and engineers for achieving that. I, for one, don't blindly look for the card with the lowest temperatures and noise in order to buy it. I look for a good all around product that is backed up by a reliable brand and an excellent customer service. In this case, this happens to be the EVGA gtx 970 ssc acx 2.0. It's the highest end evga model of the 970 available on the market right now (before they ran out of stock). I will be testing the card once I receive it tomorrow afternoon. 
 
And before people start calling me a crazy EVGA fanboy, I assure you I'm not. EVGA is just a brand that has earned my respect and preference over the years, and this time I did my best to analyze the situation as objectively as I could. 

Whiplash88

DarkOneZ13
That review was generic garbage! They didn't even compare the card any of the other competitor's brands. I can't believe how much koolaid people are sipping these days! Is rabid fanboyism everywhere anymore? Evga is charging just as much of a premium sometimes more for a far worse quality product. You people got served by EVGA & half of you peeps just turn around and say may i have another sir. Would you buy a car with a plastic engine & a glass body & pay just as much, maybe a little more than a quality car too? How blind can you possibly be?

Um.... I think your blowing this waaaaaay out of perspective here.. Please don't assume that everyone here is a drooling indoctrinated mind slave.  I can understand how that review would have been frustrating if you were just looking for graph comparisons of noise/temp/performance results but it wasn't garbage. This review wasn't meant to compare the card to other cards, its about the supposed "poor-quality" constructino of EVGAs cards. Its purely meant to educate the consumer on the construction, ideology and operation. And its great to see the difference between the ACX 700 cards compared to this new ACX on the 900 cards. It really shows that EVGA is dedicated to improvements in ever generation, even if its gradual.

So FEW people have actually had coil whine problems, and the "fan noise" has aleady been nailed down to the fan profile. The fans themselves aren't louder than any other fan, but the profiles are higher. I know there have been a couple of articles that compare the EVGA 970 to the Asus Strix 970 and the noise difference is 10db (something like 29-39) but 32db is classified as a whisper   Thats pretty darn quiet still, and its all still changeable in the fan profile settings.

Some bad cards, somewhere at some time, from ANY company are a guarantee. Thats just the world of tech. Its not like EVGA is our local dirty hollywood-cigar-smokin-crazy car salesman thats beating a baby seal for a BETTER DEAL and then selling us total garbage at BMW prices. We're not getting cheated. They've sold THOUSANDS of cards, and only... 3 maybe 5 people on evga forums have complained? And ONE website, ONE WEBSITE complains about the noise and coil whine in their review, and the WORLD LOOSES ITS MIND... Don't you think, to be fair, if the reviewer had a defective card, that they should have returned it and reviewed a good one?

My main point being, problems will happen. At some point. I've had Asus problems, AsRock problems, gigabyte problems, Seagate problems, you name it. What really counts, is how the company takes care of you when these problems happen. There is no ONE company for videocards, or motherboards, or ram that will ALWAYS be reliable. The industry is in constant fluxuation and competition, so its bound to change. And all the kinks of the new GPU series are still getting worked out by EVERY company right now. A lot of these problems that people are having are largley due to the fact that X99 has various SLI, RAM, PCI, issues etc. 

All in all, I've never been treated as well anywhere else, than at EVGA. These guys have BY FAR THE BEST customer service and helpful forums. I LOVE EVGA and everything they've done as well as everything they've "stood for" if you want to get that cheesy. Besides, good things come to those who wait. These things WILL get sorted out. Just be patient. New tech releases always have a few kinks on release.

sahafiec
that's the only EVGA GTX 970 model I would pay money for right now.
 

Update 9/26: While it's still under development, EVGA has given us an early copy of their zero fan speed idle vBIOS for testing, and we can confirm it's working. Please see our Power, Temp, & Noise section for more details

 
so stay tuned folks! 

OddLawnGnome
One week into owning the ACX 970... and it's going back to the store as soon as I can get the MSI or Asus. I've tried all of the fan presets, there's a persistent whine and if I set it to Quiet my game starts stuttering. I would be fine with accepting that as a defect (these things happen) and giving it another shot but now I know that a misaligned heatsink isn't even recognized as an issue I have no desire whatsoever to experience this "amazing" customer service you keep doe-eyedly babbling on about. In fact, let's analyze what they had to say: 
 
"The way the EVGA GTX 970 ACX heat sink was designed is based on the GTX 970 wattage plus an additional 40% cooling headroom on top of it. There are 3 heat pipes on the heatsink – 2 x 8mm major heat pipes to distribute the majority of the heat from the GPU to the heatsink, and a 3^rd 6mm heatpipe is used as a supplement to the design to reduce another 2-3 degrees Celsius. Also we would like to mention that the cooler passed NVIDIA Greenlight specifications."
When I attach a heatsink I generally try to make sure all the pipes are in direct contact with the die, but I'm not a company trying to save face by assuming their customers are technically inept morons, so what do I know?

"Due to the GPU small die size, we intended for the GPU to contact two major heat pipes with direct touch to make the best heat dissipation without any other material in between."
I was confused why they even left (er, designed) the third heatpipe if it wasn't going to touch anything, but then I remembered something. Air is a much more efficient heat conductor than thermal compound and copper. Duh!
 
"We all know the Maxwell GPU is an extremely power efficient GPU, our SC cooler was overbuilt for it and allowed us to provide cards with boost clocks at over 1300MHz. EVGA also has an “FTW” version for those users who want even higher clocks."
Blah blah blah, buy our other products.

EVGA_Marketing
Regarding the recent GTX 970 feedback, we would like to provide the following statements and actions to address it:
 
1. We understand that some users were expecting the ACX 2.0 fan version to be available on the launch day, but unfortunately the ACX 2.0 development schedule did not allow us to have ACX 2.0 product available at launch. We plan to offer an ACX 2.0 fan upgrade program, stay tuned for news on this.
 
2. For EVGA GTX 970 ACX cards we have two different fansink designs, FTW ACX 2.0, and SSC and below. For those users who have SSC and below, and are not pleased with the cooling performance, we are adding the GTX 970 FTW to the stepup program as an option.
 
3. We are going to release a new BIOS upgrade to all 970 ACX owners that will fine tune the fan performance and provide better acoustics. Stay tuned.
 
4. Some EVGA users have reported inductor noise on their GTX 970, if you think you have this type of concern then please contact our support.
 
Sorry for the inconvenience, EVGA's top priority is customer satisfaction.
 
Thanks,
Joe