EVGA recently launched a water cooled graphics card that pairs the GTX 1080 processor with the company's FTW PCB and a closed loop (AIO) water cooler to deliver a heavily overclockable card that will set you back $730.

The GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid is interesting because the company has opted to use the same custom PCB design as its FTW cards rather than a reference board. This FTW board features improved power delivery with a 10+2 power phase, two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors, Dual BIOS, and adjustable RGB LEDs. The cooler is shrouded with backlit EVGA logos and has a fan to air cool the memory and VRMs that is reportedly quiet and uses a reverse swept blade design (like their ACX air coolers) rather than a traditional blower style fan. The graphics processor is cooled by a water loop.

The water block and pump sit on top of the GPU with tubes running out to the 120mm radiator. Luckily the fan on the radiator can be easily disconnected, allowing users to use their own fan if they wish. According to Youtuber Jayztwocents, the Precision XOC software controls the fan speed of the fan on the card itself but users can not adjust the radiator fan speed themselves. You can connect your own fan to your motherboard and control it that way, however.

Display outputs include one DVI-D, one HDMI, and three DisplayPort outputs (any four of the five can be used simultaneously).

Out of the box this 215W TDP graphics card has a factory overclock of 1721 MHz base and 1860 MHz boost. Thanks to the water cooler, the GPU stays at a frosty 42°C under load. When switched to the slave BIOS (which has a higher power limit and more aggressive fan curve), the card GPU Boosted to 2025 and hit 51°C (he managed to keep that to 44°C by swapping his own EK-Vardar fan onto the radiator). Not bad, especially considering the Founder's Edition hit 85°C on air in our testing! Unfortunately, EVGA did not touch the memory and left the 8GB of GDDR5X at the stock 10 GHz.

  GTX 1080 GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid Slave BIOS
GPU GP104 GP104 GP104
GPU Cores 2560 2560 2560
Rated Clock 1607 MHz 1721 MHz 1721 MHz
Boost Clock 1733 MHz 1860 MHz 2025 MHz
Texture Units 160 160 160
ROP Units 64 64 64
Memory 8GB 8GB 8GB
Memory Clock 10000 MHz 10000 MHz 10000 MHz
TDP 180 watts 215 watts ? watts
Max Tempurature 85°C 42°C 51°C
MSRP (current) $599 ($699 FE) $730 $730

The water cooler should help users hit even higher overclocks and/or maintain a consistent GPU Boost clock at much lower temperatures than on air. The GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid graphics card does come at a bit of a premium at $730 (versus $699 for Founders or ~$650+ for custom models), but if you have the room in your case for the radiator this might be a nice option! (Of course custom water cooling is more fun, but it's also more expensive, time consuming, and addictive. hehe)

What do you think about these "hybrid" graphics cards?