BFG GeForce GTX 295 H20 review (water cooling)

BFG GeForce GTX 295 H2O

Okay granted, I think the reference design of the GTX 295 is already quite okay. That doesn't mean though that everybody agrees with me, to the contrary I had a discussion about it with one of our forum administrators two weeks ago and John thinks the design of the GTX 295 is rather ugly. So for some the design alone is enough to apply a different cooling technique. Once you want to water-cool a GTX 295... things get a little more complex though. See, the videocard is in fact two PCBs with the cooler in the middle. That definitely changes the dynamics and overall looks.

Sitting in-between the BFG GTX 295 is a liquid cooling block that originates from Danger Den. This company delivers the blocks exclusively to BFG and are extreme reputable doing so. The sheer looks however are strange, cool, funny... but the outer sides of the PCBs are uncovered and naked... looks weird... yet cool.

We'll run through the entire water-cooling solution in the photo-shoot though. Overclocking - None! NVIDIA will not allow the GTX 295 cards to be overclocked. And that makes BFG cry, as they just love to deliver pre-overclocked products. Especially when they are water-cooled, the potential is enormous. We'll look into some (insane) overclocking later on in this article though. But yeah, the product comes with reference clock frequencies.

• Memory: 1792 MB (896 MB per GPU) at 999 MHz
• Shaders processor: 240 per GPU, 480 in total @ 1242 MHz
• Core frequency: 576 MHz (Texture and ROP units)

Dual GPU based card or not, the H2O card is 2 SLI compatible. That's right, rob your bank account and you could even place two of these puppies next to each other for some Quad SLI lovin'.

Packaging and Accessories then, included in the box you'll find:

• GeForce GTX 295 H2O model
• Driver CD
• HDMI cable
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• dual 6-pin to 8-pin power cable
• Manual / quick install guide
• VGA->DVI dongle
• S/PDIF cable
• Two fittings (barbs) for 2-way / 3-way SLI
• Two fittings (barbs) each for 3/8" & 1/2" inner diameter tubing
• Two sets of plastic clamps
• One 2" piece of 1/2" tubing for SLI

A pretty okay bundle. All you need to hook up the water-cooled card is the actual water-cooling setup, your hands, and make sure you have 3/8" & 1/2" inner diameter tubing. Everything needed is in the kit. The one thing I do like to see changed are the plastic clamps. It's ugly rubbish. Metal clamps, it's the proper way to go at this high-end level.

Anyway, also included is a small S/PDIF cable. You hook it up to your mainboard/soundcard S/PDIF lead, then connect the wire to the S/PDIF input on the card and you'll now have multi-channel audio over HDMI. Touching on the topic of HDMI, BFG includes a HDMI cable with all cards that have an HDMI port. Very classy, I like that very much.

Warranty
BFG will intro this product with the luxuries that they always offer. Inside the USA you'll receive a full life-time warranty, which is just a really nice feature. Outside the US you are limited to 10 years warranty; which is still bloody fantastic. Mind you that if you purchase a BFG product then please register yourself at the BFG website within 30 days in order to activate that warranty.

Trade-Up program
BFG has a Trade-Up program. Up to 100 days after the purchase of a new BFG graphics card you are eligible to trade in your graphics card for a newer model, you only pay the difference in cost.

Small side-note you need to be aware of, the value of the BFG graphics card you trade in will be based off of the pre-determined MSRP of the card in question at the time you apply for the trade-up so the value of your BFG product will probably be worth less after a few months.

Again mind you that if you purchase a BFG product then please register yourself at the BFG website within 30 days in order to activate that warranty & rights for the Trade-up program. As mentioned, this is a new policy recently introduced.

Ok ready for some nudity? Here's the card stripped out of it's shell.