Conclusion

Conclusion

Zotac has an excellent card at hand with the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ArcticStorm Mini. It is a good proper design, with a liquid cooling block that is working excellent. I am not sure that people will actually care about the compact design. I mean, at 20cm it's too big for a small form factor build (17~18cm max) and with liquid cooling, a little bigger might actually look better inside a PC? I mean it's a total non-issue of course, but I am trying to nail down as to what demographic needs a card that is tagged as Mini. The new card is a compact beast though, it is rather innovative and a very creative product. The performance is fantastic, its factory tweaked straight out of the box (albeit very little) and yeah, on liquid cooling runs we hardly pass 40 Degrees C marker (= awesome!). Overall the liquid cooling and very subtle LED bling make this a good looking card, the big Zotac logo, however, is very 'out there' and does not get my preference. At a liquid cooled ~40 Degrees under any load circumstance means with long duration usage, it isn't throttling down either. Compared to a reference card overall you are looking at a say ~4% on average extra in performance and 12% when tweaked. And that means the product as tested today passes Titan X and Xp performance levels, quite easily.

 Aesthetics

I spilled the beast already, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ArcticStorm Mini is truly a nice looking card, the frontside logo and massive "GeForce GTX 1080 Ti" are however too much. You are purchasing an aesthetically pleasing liquid cooled product, not a billboard, right? The overall cooler design, sure I like it. I remain skeptical about back-plates, I have to state that Zotac did it right, totally closed looks nicer but prevents airflow. With liquid-cooling however, not a biggy. Backplates can look good and protect your PCB and components from damage and, well, they can look nice as they can have a certain aesthetic appeal as well as preventing the PCB from bending. So in the end, on looks, you certainly get that premium feel of detailed aesthetics and quality. 

Cooling & Noise Levels

The reference design (Founders Edition) of the GTX 1080 Ti is set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C and quite easily hit 84 Degrees C under load/stress. As such, the reference card, once that GPU gets warmer, will clock down on voltage and that dynamic turbo clock to try and keep the card at that temperature threshold. That's throttling and it's part of the design and falls within advertised turbo frequencies. This ArcticStorm Mini runs at around the 40 Degrees C marker on water (proper cooling loop), and with the temperature threshold set at 80 Degrees C it has no need to throttle. That means on long multi-hour gaming streaks, your card will still perform 100% at that ~1900 MHz marker. We merely heard a minuscule amount of coil noises/whine at high FPS, you do not hear it inside a closed chassis. Weirdly enough we seem to hear it with all 1080 Ti cards we have tested to date. You have been able to check the thermal images, no comments here either, this is a seriously properly cooled card. Noise wise, there isn't any aside as your liquid cooling unit is responsible for venting warm air.

Power Consumption

The GP102-350-A1 Pascal GPU is rated as having a 250 Watt TDP. This GTX 1080 Ti sits at almost 260 Watts depending on your game title and GPU load. This slightly higher wattage has everything to do with the factory tweak. At this performance level you are looking at 450~500 Watts for our PC in total, that is still okay. We think a 600~650 Watt PSU would be sufficient and, if you go with 2-way SLI, an 800~900 Watt power supply is recommended. Remember, when purchasing a PSU aim to double up in Wattage as your PSU is most efficient when it is under 50% load. Here again, keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and/or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve. People often underestimate it, but if you tweak all three aforementioned variables, you can easily add 200 Watts to your peak power consumption budget.

Gaming Performance

From 1080P to Ultra HD the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti shows some serious numbers. But here's a paradox - the more difficult things get - the better the product will perform. E.g. Ultra HD is its true domain. Much like a fine wine that ages well, that means this GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will last you a long time with future, more GPU intensive games. This much performance and 11 GB of GDDR5X graphics memory help you out in Ultra HD, DSR, VR and hefty complex anti-aliasing modes. That, and of course the latest gaming titles. I consider this to be a very viable single GPU solution that allows you to game properly in Ultra HD with some very nice eye candy enabled with a single GPU. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously well at the very best image quality settings. Gaming you must do with a nice Ultra HD monitor of course or at least a 2560x1440 screen. Now, we can discuss the advantages of that 11 GB frame-buffer, but hey, you can draw your own conclusions there as performance isn't limited. And with 11 GB of it, you won't run out of graphics memory for years to come, right? So in that respect, the card is rather future proof.

Overclocking

This card has a mild factory tweak applied for you. It is roughly your maximum with maybe 50~100 MHz room left on that GPU base clock frequency. As such, by default, this card hovers in that familiar ~1,90 MHz range and tweaked at ~2,075 MHz. Really, there is no real need to overclock per se as hey, this tweak is covered by your warranty as well. If you do want to tweak, you'll get a bit more out of the base clock and roughly 1.2 GHz on the memory. You can also allow the board power limiter to go up. All these factors combined (power limiter/GPU clock/MEM clock) offer a notch more performance. Especially the memory tweak helps as the GP102 GPUs is a bit memory deprived. 

Concluding

Mostly, it is all positive with the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ArcticStorm Mini. It is easy to add to your liquid cooling loop and performs silently like a beast. To date all 1080 Ti cards have been able to tweak at the very same level due to the limiters that Nvidia applies. E.g. the performance of all GTX 1080 Ti card are more or less the same. So why would you drop a full K of your hard earned money on this card? Well it's something only you yourself can answer, but mostly aesthetics and that exotic cooling really. Going liquid on this GTX 1080 Ti offered us 40 Degrees C under load while keeping the VRM area and GDDR5X areas in line and cooled as well, that is a bit of a classic. I mean, we are talking about a GP102 GPU here and that thing is big. Once we took off the cooler and cooling plates I must admit I was impressed, the build quality and component usage just oozes quality. As stated, tweaking performance is in line with any other GTX 1080 Ti though, and that means it remains limited to whatever Nvidia dictates - and that is that ~2075 MHz Boost domain. You have seen the thermal images, these show good proper results as the card throughout all locations remains at proper temps. If you can pick it up for the right price then we can wholeheartedly recommend it. The heart of this beast is a GP102 GPU and it is one of the fastest graphics cards your money can get you as hey, this dawg is up-to 40% faster than the GTX 1080 and can be up to twice as fast as one GTX 1070. In closing, we feel the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ArcticStorm Mini is a proper enthusiast class product, but you do pay for that premium in price at roughly the 850 USD/EURO marker. Aside from my logo/branding comment, this is as far as my nagging can go as otherwise this product will get two big thumbs up. Very nice & pretty, a top pick.

 - H

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