We're quietly hoping that liquid-cooling will replace high-end air cooling, and we're not the only ones. ZOTAC has today announced its liquid-cooled, near-silent single GPU graphics card – the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX ZONE Edition.
The slightly overclocked card uses a custom water-cooling system that promises to deliver GPU temperatures up to 21.5 per cent lower than air-cooled alternatives.
The 9800 GTX ZONE Edition features a self-contained water-cooling system that ZOTAC claims requires no end-user maintenance. The liquid-cooling setup comes pre-assembled and requires the user to simply mount the 120mm fan and radiator module.
Carsten Berger, marketing director at ZOTAC International, said:
"Many enthusiasts seek better cooling performance and quieter operation from their graphics card cooler through third party vendors, but maintaining low noise with high-performance using air-cooling solutions is a hard task. With our ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX ZONE Edition, customers can have the high performance and quiet operation of water-cooling without the hassles of regular maintenance or installation, which often voids the factory graphics card warranty."
The card provides 512MiB of GDDR3 memory and core, shader and memory clock speeds of 700 MHz, 1700 MHz and 2250 MHz, respectively.
It seems a useful all-round alternative for users who demand a near-silent system. Nonetheless, with NVIDIA's GTX-series looming large, now might not be the time to pump out more 9800-based derivatives.
Official press release: ZOTAC Unleashes Water-Cooled GeForce 9800 GTX Graphics Card
