O-Sense
CONCLUSION
When NVIDIA released the GTX 970 and 980 models roughly 9 months ago they “highlighted” the fact that the GTX 970 was not much “weaker” compared to the GTX 980 and with the drivers used back then that was pretty much the case. Well i can’t really comment on the reference NVIDIA cards since I never got my hands on them but today with one of the latest ForceWare driver sets the difference between the WindForce 3X OC model and the iChill Ultra model is quite large (although this is also due to the large overclocking of the 2nd). In any case we all knew that the GTX 980 was a better card but what really impressed us was the craftsmanship by everyone at Inno3D since thanks to its many metal parts the iChill Ultra feels like a tank compared to the WindForce 3X OC. Even if build quality however is not your thing you can’t really ignore the much lower temperature levels of the iChill Ultra something which allows for much higher overclocks compared to other models. Noise levels are indeed somewhat higher because of the high-speed fans used (and let’s not forget that you can easily clean them by first removing the metal shroud) including the top 50mm one but I really doubt anyone will have a problem with just 42dBA at load, not when most power supply units and CPU coolers surpass that. The only slight problem people may have with the iChill Ultra is its size since it requires 3 full slots to mount not to mention that because it's based on the reference PCB it is 300mm long and 115mm tall. Of course you don’t get such a high-end card without doing your homework first but we do need to point that out.
Developing what might be the most “complete” air-cooled GeForce GTX 980 graphics card in the market obviously costs and so does its cooling system so the current price of 615Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) Inno3D asks for their iChill Ultra 4GB is pretty much justified considering that MSI, EVGA and Gigabyte all ask slightly less for their own custom extra-overclocked GTX 980 models. Unfortunately we were unable to find it anywhere inside the USA and that’s something we really hope Inno3D can fix since it’s really a shame for such a card to have zero availability there. With that out of the way after spending nearly a week with it I really can’t say anything bad about the Inno3D GeForce GTX 980 iChill Ultra 4GB. I would if Inno3D had neglected making it possible for the end user to clean the fans since their positioning makes it hard to clean from the outside but they did and so I really can’t keep our Platinum Award away from such a complete graphics card.
PROS
- Superior Build Quality
- Excellent Performance
- Design (For Some)
- HerculeZ X4 Air Boss Cooling System (Extremely Low Temperatures)
- Power Consumption
- Excellent Factory Overclock
- Overclocking Headroom
- HDMI v2.0 / 3x DisplayPort / DVI-I
- 4GB VRAM
CONS
- Size (Reference PCB / 300mm Long)
- Current Availability (Especially In The USA)
