Quote from: QuintLeo on November 28, 2017, 09:59:58 AM

The Aorus 1080 ti seems to be a good design (I have 2 of them) - Gigabyte didn't cheap out on the fans, they're real ball bearing designs - and the cooling is impressively good, though I suspect little or no better than any of the other "2.5 slot wide" cards.
The cooler design is WAY overkill for a 1080 or 1070ti or below though.
They definitely run better than my EVGA SC, MSI Turbo (blower model), or the Gigabyte Windforce I have in GTX 1080 ti cards at anything over about 80% TDP, and cool better across the board.

IMO at this point the folks with the best cards for long-term mining use are Sapphire on the AMD side (they are my GO TO choice period for Team Red, VERY long lasting time at the top) and probably EVGA on the NVidia side.

MSI looks nice on specs but in my very small sample size I've had mixed results on their designs (the Gaming X 1070 and 1080 models are crazy with their 240 watt default TDP but don't cool much if any better than the EVGA SC design, and their "Aero" ITX model has very poor cooling vs the Gigabyte ITX (but the Gigabyte has that JUNK FAN issue, and I've also had one just suddenly die on me a few days ago when the notorious F4 fuse blew - and it DID not come back up when I replaced the fuse).

Zotac - I'm on the fence about at this point, can't find any definitely answer on if their fans are ball bearing or not, which makes me inclined to think NOT and therefore should be avoided.

I live in the tropics so it gets fairly hot and I do not use AC too cool my rig. The GPU's available were/are rather slim so I bought a Zotac 1080ti. I have to keep the fan on a 75 - 95% level to keep it in the 60-68c range. An Aorus became available so I bought one and these cards cool rather easily. I keep the fans on the Aorus at a far lower level and it cools very nicely. I have some Gigabyte 1070 G1 as well and they seem to cool very nicely as well. It's only been 3 months since I have acquired these cards so their longevity cannot be determined. I will not buy another Zotac even with the $65 difference with an Aorus.