When interviewing EVGA Extreme OC Engineer “Kingpin,” the term “dailies” came up – as in daily users, or “just gamers,” or generally people who don’t use LN2 to overclock their GPU. The GTX 1080 Ti Kingpin card is not a device built for “dailies,” but rather for extreme overclockers – people who are trying to break world records.
Cards like this – the Lightning would be included – do have a reason to exist. Criticism online sometimes calls such devices “pointless” for delivering the same overall out-of-box experience as nearly any other 1080 Ti, but those criticizing aren’t looking at it from the right perspective. A Kingpin, Lightning, or other XOC card is purchased to eliminate the need to perform hard mods to get a card up to speed. It’s usable out of the box as an XOC tool.
Learn more about the 1080 Ti Kingpin PCB and VRM in our below PCB analysis (ft. Buildzoid):
More to come on this card, we hope.
Editorial: Steve Burke
XOC Analyst: Buildzoid