I was tired of waiting for more official news on the Hydro Coppers, so went ahead and grabbed an EVGA GTX 1080 SC Gaming, and EK Waterblock / Backplate. 
Install was easy and the temps are unreal.  But before I get to the numbers, I wanted to get some forum feedback on a simple mod to the waterblock I am thinking about.
 
Here is the block installed, and a sample of the fluid I will be using.  Looks great, but since I am mounting this vertically in my Core P5 (build log here), if I insert LEDs they are a bit glaring in the dark.
 

 
 
 
So my idea was to basically "blackout" the acrlyic so that only the fluid parts show.  Now the LED only glows around the edges, which is what I prefer.
 

 

 
Does anyone think this just looks terrible, or should I keep it this way?
 
On to Overclocking, Benchmarks, and Temps.  One thing I noticed off the bat that was kind of unexpected, is that this particular card will Boost to 2000MHz on stock settings.  Not complaining, but didn't know it was set by default to go that high.  As far as overclocking goes, the highest I could go and still get 100% stability was a max core clock of 2126MHz, and Memory at 5500MHz.  I haven't messed with voltage at all, so maybe there will be some more wiggle room if I do that.  Here is a benchmark running Haven Valley. 
 

 
I also ran a few rounds of "Shadows of Mordor" and averaged around 126fps on Ultra settings, and then did a few runs on 3DMark to continue to test stability.  Note that my CPU is not overclocked much right now, as I am just trying to feel out the stability of the GPU at the moment, not go for max score with the the entire system OC'd to the limits.

• Fire Strike Extreme:  9958
• Fire Strike Ultra:  5404

 Here is the great news about this card and block combo... my temps after almost 2 hours of overclocked stress testing never went past 45c!  Loving the setup so far, but have to yank the card from my current system soon as it is going in the new build I am working on.  It will stay in my current system for maybe 1 more day, so if you have any questions, post them here. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
 

Just the review I needed!
Tks for sharing, man, things are so nice and cool in water.
 
Cheers

It looks amazing! However, I'm waiting for NCIX to have in stock the full metal block because there is no way Im placing and acrylic block inside my computer.

dedox
Question. Does default backplate that comes with evga sc card fit with the EK waterblock?
Also i don't really like your covered block and i think those LEDs remove blue color from your liquid way too much.
Imho if you'd place LEDs somewhere in the distance, so they slightly illuminate your card would produce better results.

No, the EVGA backplate that ships with the SC does not work with the EK waterblock.
 
The pictures look a lot more washed out than it does in real life.  That being said, I have some blue 3mm LEDs arriving today, that I will most likely be using instead to keep with the blue theme my new build has going on.  I may also use stronger resistors to dim the light a bit.

Wow.  2000 at stock settings?  Awesome.  I was at Fry's today and a SC was sitting there.... so I grabbed it.  I guess I'll get a block!

gutcheck
Wow.  2000 at stock settings?  Awesome.  I was at Fry's today and a SC was sitting there.... so I grabbed it.  I guess I'll get a block!

 
Do it!
 

Decided after getting some good feedback to modify the blackout and add RBG LED strips instead of the 2 x 3mm LEDs to give a more even light across the acrylic, instead of just 2 bright spots.



Even without adding the carbon fiber vinyl, this is looking pretty sweet.



I personally think it looks even better this way, and the glow around the edge matches what I am trying to achieve with my case in this build.  Now that I have RGB LEDs Installed, I can also tweak things to make sure I have a uniform color throughout the entire build (which I have not done yet).

This is the first time i have come across water cooled cards being so close to air cooled in OC performance. 

I Love carbon wrapping things ;) looks great. my FE'S oc the same as yours.

dvelope
i will have a ACX 3.0 ''non-SC'' card shipped to me next month can you please link me the water block you bought and or instructions on how to install so i dont waste my cash on a block that doesnt work on my card ends in number 6181

Your card is compatible with this line of EK blocks:
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/water-blocks/vga-blocks/full-cover-for-nvidia-geforce/geforce-gtx-10x0-series
 
Install instructions can be found on each of the block's product page, and there are plenty of YouTube videos to help there as well.

samuraijack1111
I Love carbon wrapping things ;) looks great. my FE'S oc the same as yours.

Thanks!  This is my first time wrapping stuff in it.  Didn't want the acrylic on my case to show much, so pretty much looked to the carbon wrapping as a solution, and so far it has worked out pretty well.

sethleigh
It's never been my personality to care much what the inside of my computer case looks like, especially since it's under my desk the whole time and I would never, ever see anything of it. My eyes are being opened to the possibilities though, and I sort of admire the kind of thinking that goes into making these computers aesthetically pleasing as well as fun to use.
 
I think your carbon fiber and LED-lit water plate and card look cool, dude! Good job, and good luck on the rest of your build!

Thanks!  I'm liking how everything is coming together.  It takes a lot of time to for this kind of project, but luckily I only do it once every few years.

eisenb11

Mr_Armageddon
 

 

I finally got around to OC'ing my 2x 1080 FE's last night. Didn't take any screenies but from my notes:
 
Both cards got +225 GPU and +575 MEM stable.
 
Temp only went up about 2C under between stock (43C) and OC (44-45C).
 
Unigine Valley results were a score of 4646 @ 111 FPS.
 
Ran the tests @ 1920 x 1200 with Ultra qual and 8x AA.
 
I managed to get the MEM up to +625 without crashing, but I think I was riding the edge of going down as the scores got worse. Backed off to +600, but also with worse scores so backed off again to return to +575.
 
Ran the tests individually on both cards with similar results.

 
Yeah, sounds like the ECC was kicking in slowing things down as it corrected memory errors. Very nice temps!
 
Out of curiosity, what do you get from the Extreme Valley preset?
 
I ask because that test is 1080P, and my single 980 Ti (just got a Classified recently and OCed it to 1505/8000MHz) gets 109.8 FPS - so I would have thought SLI 1080's would get much higher, even at 1920X1200. Do you have SLI enabled?

arestavo
 
Yeah, sounds like the ECC was kicking in slowing things down as it corrected memory errors. Very nice temps!
 
Out of curiosity, what do you get from the Extreme Valley preset?
 
I ask because that test is 1080P, and my single 980 Ti (just got a Classified recently and OCed it to 1505/8000MHz) gets 109.8 FPS - so I would have thought SLI 1080's would get much higher, even at 1920X1200. Do you have SLI enabled?

Just realized I ran the wrong test, I ran the Extreme, but I think you meant the Extreme HD since you said 1080P. New results below:
 
Score: 4969 @ 118.8 FPS.
 
SLI is not enabled. You can see that the second card is in a low power state (underclocked) in the pic.
 

 
EDIT
 
And here's one with SLI enabled.
 
Score: 6292 @ 150.4 FPS.
 

 

arestavo
I thought it wasn't - Looking good!

Ran the SLI test using a standard SLI connector. Not sure how much of a difference the HB connector will make. I'm waiting on EK to release theirs.