EVGA’s GTX 1080 FTW Gaming Hydro Copper ($680 on Newegg, when in stock) puts a personal touch on Nvidia’s beastly graphics card by boosting its base clock to almost as high as the Founders Edition boost clock and adding custom cooling and an extra 8-pin power connection. It’s a winner, though you can also get even more from the GTX 1080 by stepping up to the Classified or Kingpin versions with higher clock speeds.
As you can see, the FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 card’s design is pretty amazing, with brushed metal sections secured to the black plastic and a honeycomb mesh section in the front that lights up RGB LEDs (controlled using EVGA’s new PrecisionX OC software). That lighting gives the card a nice aesthetic while keeping the cooler small enough to fit in 2-slot configurations, though it will need a full-size PCIe slot and two free 8-pin power connections to work properly.
The FTW card is a bit taller than the 267mm length and dual-slot form factor of the reference design, which could pose problems with certain smaller cases, especially those with top-mounted power connectors. Otherwise, the FTW card looks great with its slick branding and features — including dual BIOS support and a customizable RGB logo — as well as a 14-phase power design and a dual-fan ACX 3.0 cooler. EVGA’s iCX technology is included as well, which bases the cooling on various thermistors around the GPU to keep temperatures low.