The discussion quickly went into the one-way direction of how bad the bang for the buck is for this card. I'm still planning to get one regardless because I was always happy with my EVGA cards and their support in the past - a thing I can't say at all about my former cards.
 
Anyway, is there really nothing more positive to be said about it? It might not come overvolted to the max at stock, but we can do that ourselves, right?

For $799, it would be incredibly strange if it didn't include backplate

Does it?

hmmm here's hoping someone can confirm it does or doesn't from EVGA.

Well this card didn't get overpriced in my country at all. Only 2043$..... i live in Denmark.
 
http://www.proshop.dk/underkategorisering/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-980-HC-2462915.html
 

Verun
They might have confused it with the Titan Z or something :o

Nope :) this isnt the only website that has it and the price is nearly the same. I have no idea how they came up with that number, its insane.
I have never been one to build the cheapest system, but this is ridiculous.

Backplate is included with complete card.
 
Here is block by itself, will be in stock later today http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=400-CU-G980-B1
 

EVGA_JacobF
Backplate is included with complete card.
 
Here is block by itself, will be in stock later today 
 

Thanks for confirming Jacob 

Soon

Was it my imagination or did Anybody Notice that the Clocks on the Hydro Copper have been lowered to the same clocks as the Classified?

hallowen
Was it my imagination or did Anybody Notice that the Clocks on the Hydro Copper have been lowered to the same clocks as the Classified?

No you are totally right.  They have been lowered.  Spec was higher 24hrs ago.  

hmmm Jacob any input/update on this?

chanesaw
Yep..  if they were 8gb cards, I could justify it..  but $250 over the reference cards are not worth it when blocks are about $125. .. I think I can manage to put my blocks on myself and save the $250 (I say $250 because I am planning on getting 2 cards) I am however really glad to see the prices on the EVGA stuff has come back down... price gouging your loyal customers is a real quick way to lose them.

 

Cableguy696969
$799!? Definitely not a good deal with this one. The GTX780 HC being $799 made sense since the reference card was $650. But GTX980s are $550. Nope

 
Remember what I said in Post #89 & 100?
 

punknugget
I'm sure that the Superclocked 2.0 one will be very similar in it's OC'd value as this new one EVGA is doing with EK. Why spend $799.99 or $899.99 when you can spend $569.95 and $134.95 = $704.90 and save about a $100.00 and it'll be the same thing. Personally I got a feeling this new EVGA waterblocked GPU is going to be closer to the $899.99 price, and if that's the case anyone not doing it yourself is (to me) just spending extra money for a EVGA black cover? Not worth it to me...

 

punknugget
Although that would be the idea, that's hardly ever true. These "custom" waterblocks ALWAYS cost more than doing it yourself, and I like I just said in my prior post sometimes they're not faster; defeating the whole purpose of buying one of these in the first place. I already gave you what I spent. Again, I paid: $569.95 (980 GPU), $124.99 (EK Waterblock) & $34.99 (EK Backplate; which I didn't get). Total = $729.93. Now I spent a total of $694.94 (again, no backplate - to me not needed). I'd like to see EVGA beat the price point on what I spent… they're not. Why? Like any company they're in this to make money, and all they're really doing is just putting an aluminum cover with their logo cut out of it (which does look cool), and charge you $150 - $200+ for it. Again, (to me) it's not worth it. Heck if I wanted that I could have someone do that at a machine shop (and I know quite a few of them), and put the Hackintosh logo that I use for my Avatar. Now (to me) that would look nice…

 
I told you it was going to cost $799.99 - didn't I ??? I actually thought they were going to push the price of this card a bit further to $899.99. That's because they're in this business to make some more money. That's why I mentioned STOP WAITING and just buy this card:
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487079&cm_re=evga_gtx_980-_-14-487-079-_-Product
 
and get the water block here:
 
http://www.performance-pcs.com/ek-fc980-gtx-waterblock-for-nvidia-980-gtx-nickel-plexi-original-csq.html
 
and this extra connection piece and you're good to go:
 
http://www.performance-pcs.com/ek-fc-bridge-single-csq-plexi.html#Details
 
Really in the end you'll be only spending $70.00 more. So that's not too crazy in their price. Personally to me though, I'd rather do it myself (like I said before) as the opaque cover looks so much better in utilizing the UV lighting that I have in my system to show off the UV Green that much more with those nice EK waterblocks. I don't want them covered with that EVGA logo. Although it looks nice, it's not what I'm looking for.

Are the 980 hydro already sold out?

EDIT: Posted some speculative thoughts here but they sounded rather rather weird when I re-read them, so I removed them.