Beware: GTX 285 Waterblock issues
My registration finally went through...
Anyways, be very careful with the GTX 285s. There's a very brief thread on here that I, and I'm assuming others will too, overlooked and have ended up being severely setback because of it.
Apparently manufacturers are overhauling their GTX 285 video cards. They're reworking the GTX 275 PCB and swapping in and out some parts to meet the GTX 285 standards. However, because this is just now beginning to take place, it means that a lot of the GTX 285 waterblocks are no longer compatible with the newer cards. Cards with 118x in the model number are no longer compatible (though I can't confirm this for all 285 GPU waterblocks).
I recently bought a GTX 285 and a corresponding waterblock (Koolance VID-NX285) and they are not compatible. Specifically, some of the holes on the end farthest from the ports have been relocated, some of the memory chipsets have been shifted over slightly, and there is a large capacitor impeding on part of the block's location (near what I assume to be a small chip/MCU).
I'll include pictures of what I'm talking about when I get home.
Since I've opened the video card, I can't return it to Newegg and, though it's not confirmed and only reported from the customer service rep, since I've cut up the thermal pads to install the gpu block, I can't return that either. Therefore, I'm also open to suggestions as to any different block that may fit or mods to make these compatible.
CT
