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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2018
This review is for the MSI GTX 1070 ti Armor edition GPU.
First and foremost: It's big. Make sure your case has enough space. I initially intended to install this in a Thermaltake Core V1 case and per spec I had enough room... in theory. Turned out the card fit perfectly but the frame of the case blocked one of the power taps. I had to replace the case to install this card. If you have a big ol' case don't sweat it, but if you're on a mini-ITX build this is just a heads up.
As for the card itself, I'll start by saying the performance is fantastic. It was an enormous jump from my old GTX 970. I was able to bump everything up from medium/low settings on 1440p up to very high and ultra, and in quite a few cases I can even run games at 2160p or in between high resolutions like 1620p. It's very nice, and the higher resolutions are appreciated since I'm playing on a 4k display.
In terms of power this card is very close in performance with a GTX 1080, and all it really needs for parity with the 1080 is a decent bump in the memory clock which can be attained with MSI Afterburner. Since these 1070 ti cards come at the same base and boost clocks regardless of manufacturer, depending on your luck with the bin you have a lot of headroom for overclocking. I'm currently getting about 50MHz core above stock settings and +350MHz memory clock, and that's an extremely conservative OC. I've read of memory overclocks of up to 900MHz and core clocks at over 2GHz.
So in short, the performance is amazing and more than I even expected. Now, for the drawbacks...
This card runs HOT. The default setup leaves a lot to be desired with the fans running at a measily 2300RPM and barely keeping the card below throttling temperature (83c) by default, or failing at that. I've seen it get up to 83c easily at 1440p and up, and this was with the fan pinned at 100%. My case has good airflow with three noctua 120mm fans, two on intake, one on exhaust, and an additional Antec fan doing intake as well, so it's not a case airflow issue.
I contacted MSI for assistance with the heat assuming maybe there was a BIOS update or something and they just told me it was defective and to send it in to them. They didn't even ask any technical questions about the problem. After research I've found high temps are an issue with the Armor series cards in general, and no, the card is not defective in any way.
There were a couple reasons for the excessive temps:
* The factory thermal paste job was terrible. Thin and bubbled, was not doing decent heat transfer. There was more paste on the board itself than there was on the GPU's chip. :(
* One of the VRM units was completely uncovered by the thermal tape under the cooler block
* The voltage on the card at stock was higher than needed.
* Honestly the Armor's cooling solution in general is underperforming.
I ended up redoing the thermal past with Arctic MX-4, and while I was at it I stretched the thermal tape a bit to cover the last VRM. This alone brought the temps down a few degrees. Then I used MSI Afterburner to do my own voltage control. At stock the card was at 1.031v. It easily maintains the existing boost clocks at 1.000v and in fact boosted higher while staying cooler. Went all the way to 2012MHz on the core boost without really messing with it beyond dropping the power limit. To further control temps though I ended up locking it in at 1949MHz and +350 mem clock at 0.975v. At this voltage the card performs just fine and stays cool. It's generally between 68c and 73c now, with occasional spikes up to 79c if running at 4k on some games. So all told up to a 15c temperature drop.
I'm not really happy with MSI's support service on this, nor the cooler's design, as it's really underwhelming. That said, it is extremely quiet. You can't even hear the thing when the fan is running 100% full tilt. That said, if you're willing to put in some work the card can run cool and fast, and performs great. But if you have room in your case, I'd probably recommend getting the 1070 ti Gaming or Titanium over the Armor series, even if they're a bit pricier. It's my understanding they run much cooler out of the box.
All told, despite the issues getting temps under control I'm happy with the 1070 ti Armor's performance and would generally recommend it, but only if you're willing to put in a bit of extra effort to optimize the performance and experience with it..
First and foremost: It's big. Make sure your case has enough space. I initially intended to install this in a Thermaltake Core V1 case and per spec I had enough room... in theory. Turned out the card fit perfectly but the frame of the case blocked one of the power taps. I had to replace the case to install this card. If you have a big ol' case don't sweat it, but if you're on a mini-ITX build this is just a heads up.
As for the card itself, I'll start by saying the performance is fantastic. It was an enormous jump from my old GTX 970. I was able to bump everything up from medium/low settings on 1440p up to very high and ultra, and in quite a few cases I can even run games at 2160p or in between high resolutions like 1620p. It's very nice, and the higher resolutions are appreciated since I'm playing on a 4k display.
In terms of power this card is very close in performance with a GTX 1080, and all it really needs for parity with the 1080 is a decent bump in the memory clock which can be attained with MSI Afterburner. Since these 1070 ti cards come at the same base and boost clocks regardless of manufacturer, depending on your luck with the bin you have a lot of headroom for overclocking. I'm currently getting about 50MHz core above stock settings and +350MHz memory clock, and that's an extremely conservative OC. I've read of memory overclocks of up to 900MHz and core clocks at over 2GHz.
So in short, the performance is amazing and more than I even expected. Now, for the drawbacks...
This card runs HOT. The default setup leaves a lot to be desired with the fans running at a measily 2300RPM and barely keeping the card below throttling temperature (83c) by default, or failing at that. I've seen it get up to 83c easily at 1440p and up, and this was with the fan pinned at 100%. My case has good airflow with three noctua 120mm fans, two on intake, one on exhaust, and an additional Antec fan doing intake as well, so it's not a case airflow issue.
I contacted MSI for assistance with the heat assuming maybe there was a BIOS update or something and they just told me it was defective and to send it in to them. They didn't even ask any technical questions about the problem. After research I've found high temps are an issue with the Armor series cards in general, and no, the card is not defective in any way.
There were a couple reasons for the excessive temps:
* The factory thermal paste job was terrible. Thin and bubbled, was not doing decent heat transfer. There was more paste on the board itself than there was on the GPU's chip. :(
* One of the VRM units was completely uncovered by the thermal tape under the cooler block
* The voltage on the card at stock was higher than needed.
* Honestly the Armor's cooling solution in general is underperforming.
I ended up redoing the thermal past with Arctic MX-4, and while I was at it I stretched the thermal tape a bit to cover the last VRM. This alone brought the temps down a few degrees. Then I used MSI Afterburner to do my own voltage control. At stock the card was at 1.031v. It easily maintains the existing boost clocks at 1.000v and in fact boosted higher while staying cooler. Went all the way to 2012MHz on the core boost without really messing with it beyond dropping the power limit. To further control temps though I ended up locking it in at 1949MHz and +350 mem clock at 0.975v. At this voltage the card performs just fine and stays cool. It's generally between 68c and 73c now, with occasional spikes up to 79c if running at 4k on some games. So all told up to a 15c temperature drop.
I'm not really happy with MSI's support service on this, nor the cooler's design, as it's really underwhelming. That said, it is extremely quiet. You can't even hear the thing when the fan is running 100% full tilt. That said, if you're willing to put in some work the card can run cool and fast, and performs great. But if you have room in your case, I'd probably recommend getting the 1070 ti Gaming or Titanium over the Armor series, even if they're a bit pricier. It's my understanding they run much cooler out of the box.
All told, despite the issues getting temps under control I'm happy with the 1070 ti Armor's performance and would generally recommend it, but only if you're willing to put in a bit of extra effort to optimize the performance and experience with it..
