Quote Originally Posted by gabe View Post
Try to reflect in objective engineering and economic terms: The manufacturer knows what their product is going to be subjected to. As a result, the choice of a cooling solution is based on a set of specifications that includes cooling performance, form factor, cost as well as product liability. If the product cannot perform reliably or has a limited shelf life with the tools that are provided to the enthusiast consumer to overclock the card, then the product may become a serious liability.

You are correctly mentionning the hassle of having to deal with a dead card from your standpoint, but now put yourself in the position of a manufacturer who would have to deal with hundreds of failed cards.. it just would not make sense to expose itself to this kind of hassle for any manufacturer.

Not to say that it couldn't happen, after all mistakes are part of the fabric of our Society, but there should be a reasonable assumption that things are done the way they are because they work within the intended specification enveloppe.

In practical terms, our solution drops the VRM's temps under extreme conditions by ~ 30C's compared to stock with no noise penalty. This in itself extends the component life well beyond the original specs. There are other factors that may influence the product shelf life under extreme conditions, but excessive temperature of these components is not going to be one of them.



Thank you for thinking this thru, it is appreciated. I would only comment on your qualification of the potential users as being "beginners". I think on the contrary that people "in the know" (engineers for example, and certainly enthusiast users by extension) would appreciate the value of the argument I am presenting above.

For the record, I am in favor of rating products based on a set of objective as well as subjective features, but I think that it is important to put things in prospective with respect to the relative importance of the objective criteria. As it stands, my bona fide opinion as an engineer is that the VRM temp criterium should be placed in its proper context as opposed to being exploited for what I perceive to be marketing purposes of one kind or another.
Gabe, you misunderstood, i don't mean that beginners are the entire potential market, but that rather the evga card would be a better option for beginners. I myself would have bought it given the choice and while I'm not as experienced as some members I'm by no means inexperienced. This is now my 4th watercooled build.