High-end video cards with water-cooling blocks are no longer a rarity, with a variety of manufacturers outfitting their cards with the custom coolers.
Despite the heat issues associated with NVIDIA's current top-performing cards, though, we haven't actually seen many GTX 480s getting the liquid treatment.
Hoping to get in on the action, MSI has launched the latest entry in its water-cooled series, the GTX 480 HydroGen.
The card features an all-copper waterblock with carved micro channels to allow for superior heat dissipation. The manufacturer claims that the underlying GPU will run 24°C cooler than NVIDIA's reference design.
While this is a huge improvement, temperatures will still be quite high, considering that an air-cooled GTX 480 can run well over 90°C under load.
MSI is promising a ‘universal free tubing' design, which should allow compatibility with a wide range of existing water-cooling systems.
With all of that cooling power, you'd expect some pretty high clock speeds to separate this model from the pack. Unfortunately, that's not the case here, as the card ships with a standard 700MHz core while the 1,536MB GDDR5 is clocked at the default 3,696MHz.
However, MSI does allow voltage adjustments through the included Afterburner software, so intrepid overclockers should have no problem making use of the enhanced cooling.
We don't have an exact ship date for this card yet, but for those in need of a water-cooled GTX 480, the HydroGen is currently available for pre-order from Scan for around £445.
