Camille6244
Sajin: Yes, so I figure that the HC's are likely SC or SSC, for the EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN Z Superclocked is SC while the EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN Z Hydro Copper is SC even more so I guess it is SSC.  What would make it FTW; if I OC'ed myself?

Camille6244
Sajin: I mistakenly linked the Titan Z when I meant the EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN X HYDRO COPPER GAMING .  What class do you think it is?

EVGATech_DaveB
For ALL of our preinstalled full water block cards (not necessarily the hybrids) and this goes back as long as I have been here.  With the exception of Classified Hydro's which we have done, all of the Hydro's are reference PCB.  However these are ALL hand tested up front.  We run stress tests and benchmarks on them, make sure everything is where it should be.  Then, we flash the HC BIOS on them which will be a substantial clock increase.  We retest them ON AIR.  Same testing we do before hand, make sure the temps are still inn check, no artifacts, clocks are working as intended, and the frame rates are about where they should be (there will ALWAYS be variance there) the frame rate is more to make sure that we don't have a situation of we flashed the BIOS and retested and the FPS went from 94 average to 40, that says that card is NOT a HC and/or overclocking candidate.  From there all cards that pass are then removed and the HSF's removed, and the blocks installed, then they are booted into windows (this was started with Keplar) w/o water to test the seat and contact of the block, it goes into windows and normally the temp is around 35-40c +/- we do **NOT** put it under load, just make sure there are no issues with the contact of the block.  From there they are cleaned and boxed.
 
Now these are higher clocks than SSC and whatnot, however, we can only guarantee the clock that is on it out of the box, some can clock like crazy above that point, others are peaked around where the BIOS is that was flashed to it, we do not test above the rated speeds for a given card.
 
I hope this clears up your questions regarding clocks, PCBs etc for the Water Block cards.

EVGATech_DaveB
I would not say FTW's, as in recent years FTW's have used NON-reference PCB's, so I would not make that specific distinction.  But Hydros are typically the highest clocked reference component cards we sell.

EVGATech_DaveB
As for the test, it should not be a problem as long as it is something GTX 680 or newer, Fermi cards made WAY too much heat for them to be safe being tested like that.  I have 980's and they were tested with no water, went into windows just fine, I did it in my system before hooking everything up just to make sure i had no surprises.

Camille6244
I ran GeForce Experience's in-game FPS count with STAR CITIZEN on its highest settings and averaged about 72 FPS.  That is not bad considering all the stuff going on in SC, but how do I get it higher?  I see a day when SC's highest settings threaten to make my FPS go below 60 and I do not want that to happen.

EVGATech_DaveB
Glad I could help and clarify that.
 
Next, exactly that is a big plus there, testing with Water has ALWAYS been problematic, there are just concerns with water loops you don't have elsewhere.
 
Personally, I think rigid cooling looks awesome, but I will not use it myself, I am on all water and have been for years (since my socket 940 board was the new cool thing), but, I build my loops around easy maintenance and dis-assembly, eventually parts will fail, it happens, but I don't want to make the process harder than it needs to be to replace things.  When I had to do an RMA on one of my 580 Hydros years back, I was very glad I opted for malleable tubing BETWEEN the cards, not Crystal Links or one of the EK bridges (granted both options do look better).  Because I powered down, slid both cards out of the slots by about an inch, bent them at the tubes between the cards and plugged only one of them back in, the other one, the bus slot on the card was sitting on top of the PCIE slot as I was able to bend the card a few degrees, made testing easy that way.
 
So if you are going rigid, ANYTHING you can do to make testing easier is definitely something that needs to be done.  The newer gen cards are far better about not making tons of heat when at little to no load, so even with cards like TitanZ or 980TI, booting with no water is viable.  Infact, I configured mine without water, enabled SLI, rebooted it once to make sure all was well, then powered down and got the rest of the loop tubed.
 
If there is anything else I can help you with, let me know!
 
Also, if you are building with the hardware in your sig and you are going rigid tubing, please get some pics, I would LOVE to see it.

SajinHow to get more fps...
 
#1 Overclock cpu.
#2 Overclock gpu.
#3 Go 3-way or 4-way sli.
#4 Adjust in-game settings.