GELID Solutions GC-VGA02-01 1 Ball, 1 Sleeve VGA Cooler ICY VISION

Pros: Big heatsinks and thick heatpipes for amazing heat dissapation. Fans are top notch. They're quiet, even on full speed. They're UV without leds so if you get some led strips or a fan that can shine on them it makes them look even better.

This thing keeps my gtx 570 cool. I went from 50c idle to around 30c at idle/web browsing
Gaming went from 80c to topping off at 60c!!!!

Comes with pretty good thermal paste too.

Cons: Fans can't be controlled if you plug them into the card. The little heatsinks for your memory/vrm mosfets are absolute garbage. Not so much the heatsinks but the little adhesive that's supposed to keep them on. If you want to use them, buy your own sticky pads.

Other Thoughts: When i put this bad boy on i kept the bottom peice of the shroud that was on the cooler already. I didn't use the heatsinks for vrms and what not, because the black bottompeice had heatpads on everything that it needed and adds a lot of stiffness to the card preventing it from sagging. I used the GC2 thermal compound only to test and make sure with the black base the cooler still made optimal contact with the gpu itself and it does. So if you have a card that has a shroud cooler and a bottom peice, use the bottom peice! You do have to take off that peice though to remove the blower fan.

Pros: Perfect fit with the Cooler master 120mm fan that's being sold for $8.99. They come with four screws that is long enough to go through this grille and into your fan.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: As for instructions, make sure the winter logo is facing "away" from the inside. Otherwise, after installing your fan and this, and turn your PC on, it will cause friction and make a buzzing noise. Them you have to redo everything. Other than that, works good so far-will update if it collects dust or not.

Pros: This is installed on my geforce 560 (not ti). Installation is a snap if you have ever built a computer before. But where this really shines is the temps it gives your gpu when overclocked. Stock I was getting 30 degrees on idle and 60 to 80 on load. (910mhz gpu clock and 1900mhz on memory clock) with the gelid I get 26 on idle 40 to 55 on load with, 930 mhz gpu clock and 1930 memory clock. Stable! Impressive as I now get 100fps (sli 560)on bf3 with 64 players. This is an oc enthusiatist dream for a gpu!

Cons: Difficult to understand manual but easy to install without it

Other Thoughts: I love this thing and its worth every penny for upgarding your gpu. Please note I also used pk3 prolimatek grease instead of the gc2 that is given. I get a 2 degree difference.

Pros: This cooler is pretty versatile, and after installation, was cooling my card (GTX 560 TI from Gigabyte) a fair amount better than the original installer, which was a 4-pipe dual-fan "Windforce." That cooler lasted not quite a year before it started whining and the slave fan died, so I replaced it with this cooler. The paste is good, the sink is good, so as long as the fans hold out, it's doing well - idles as low as 27C, under load at 900mhz/1012mv it will get up into the low 70s.

Cons: The installation was somewhat pesky, and a matter of 3 or 4 words on the instruction sheet would've saved me half an hour of internet searching. Namely, it comes with an "NVIVO" heatsink attachment that it tells you to install around step 2 of the Nvidia process. It fails to mention anywhere that this piece is only for the GTX 200 series - but I looked into it before trying to install it, and there are some good videos online.

Other Thoughts: It's not a bad aftermarket cooler for the money - don't bother getting different thermal paste, the Gelid stuff is very solid and will perform about as well as Arctic Silver 5, so considering that it comes with everything needed for an install (and lots of extra heatsinks/3m thermal tape) it's the way to go.

NEVER buy Arctic Cooling products - their fans love to die nearly immediately.

Pros: Decreased idle temperature to about 35*C, an improvement of 10*s.
Decreased load temperature to 52*C, an improvement of almost 30*s. (Playing a game 99% GPU usage)
Quieter than stock heat sink.
Came with plenty of ram, VRM heatsinks etc.

Cons: The 3M thermal tape doesn't hold the component heat sinks too well. While playing Crysis 2 today, I could hear them clank(dropping onto the GPU heat sink). Good thing one didn't fall into fan itself while on. One did as I was fishing it out while the computer was off of course. The heat sink would go flying or jam the fan doing who knows what if on. The 3M tape issue prevents me from giving this 5 eggs. Peeling the tape is a small chore, but you do get better as you go along with many iterations. It be nice if the tape had starter slits on each side to peel apart to access the adhesive.
The fan cable fits into the 4 pin header on the GPU, but the connector from the heat sink fans, is ONLY 3 wires. It doesn't work with the software configuration on the GPU nor will it work with MSI Afterburners fan settings. It will blow 100%. So I had to plug it one of the motherboards fan headers via the included adapter to adjust the speed which is fine.

Other Thoughts: I got my GTX 260 about 3 years ago. I've kept it at its factory overclock. It's the BFGRGTX260MOCDE model. We miss you BFG. What prompted me in buying an aftermarket heat sink fan was seeing how my temps didn't improve after remounting the stock heat sink. When I took it apart again, I saw that the stock heat sink wasn't making complete contact with the copper of the heat sink. The impression was only in the corner of the thermal paste. My board must be warped, I don't know if it was like this from the factory, the overdone smudge of paste couldn't tell me this when I first took it apart. I had copper shimmed it and my temps were still just below 80*C while playing games. Crysis 2 shows 99% GPU load through MSI Afterburner. So I opted to buy this cooling solution and it amazed me. I've never posted a review within a day of purchasing something, it's that good. Unfortunately, I am going to have to remove the GPU heatsink to reapply the component heat sinks that have fallen. I actually ordered thermal pads to swap out the provided tape for the heat sinks as an alternative. If I cleaned the GPU RAM better, maybe the heat sinks would hold better. I didn't use an eraser on them to clean as said in the instructions. This heat sink fan takes up 3 slot spaces. My ASrock Extreme4 1155 motherboard loses just one PCI slot since there is no slot below the PCI-e slot. The CMOS battery is there instead. The installation went fine. I studied the install documents and youtube videos before I bought this item. I am glad to see all the other models of GPU that this will fit. This is version 2 of the item and will fit some of the 600 series of Nvidia cards. This is important for me when I finally upgrade. I am a couple generations behind. I hope that the 700 series will accept this too. Thanks NewEgg. And congrats on the recent court case victory for the "shopping cart" patent infringement case brought against you and many companies. You "saved online retail"!

Pros: mounted on gtx 570 zotac non reference board. cools really good with all things considered.

Cons: only one fan is working the the other is doa... but iam going to keep it and use it is still way better than stock cooling. just wont be buying anymore gelid products though. i dont like recieving doa products no matter what.

Other Thoughts: I recommend this item but watch out for the fans. besides that it runs very well. could be better qc so this dosent happen.

Pros: Good Design
"Compatible" with several cards
Comes with extra parts

Cons: Does not fit an XFX Radeon HD 6870. Although this card is meant to fit an HD 6870 it is meant for the reference card. as their website says "GELID Solutions holds no responsibility for incompatibility on non-standard cards." I was really hoping the card would work due to the fact that the arctic cooler was DOA but at least that one fit my card.

Pros: Really keeps things cool. I have one on my second EVGA GTX 560 (non-ti) and it's 20 degrees cooler under load than it's buddy. Sits at 45 or so. It wasn't THAT hard to install the cooler on the card... I probably could have been less careful than I was, but better safe than sorry!

Cons: The directions are pretty much useless besides telling you which nuts and bolts to use... That being said, it's pretty easy to figure out. I don't know a lot about hardware, but i did it in about an hour while being very cautious.

The cooler is big. And it's a bit bigger than the stock one. It takes up about 2.5 PCI slots. It is also a bit long. I had to move my HDD but that was fine. It has to be big to keep that cool while remaining simple.

The plastic clip on fans bother me a little, but at least if I accidentally touch them while they're running at 100% and blow one up, I can just swap it out.

Other Thoughts: Keeps it cool, but is a little big. No news here!

Pros: It does what it is supposed to do, cool my video card. I've read the reviews and did the research; this was the only VGA cooler that would work on my older GTX 285. My video card runs HOT, this cooled it by 23-25* C! That's huge! Runs much quieter than the stock fan, which screamed like a banshie at high rpm.

Cons: Instructions are somewhat lacking, though if you don't know what to do with something like this without the directions, then you don't belong touching it. So no star deduction...

Other Thoughts: My GTX 285 went from 63*C idle to 40*C idle. With a 25% load it would jump up to 67-69*C depending on the room temp. Now it sits at 43*C. I have yet to give it a full burn in test, but I doubt it will get hotter than 46*C. With the vga card dissipating more heat, I had to turn up the CPU cooler fan speed. It now runs 2*C hotter than before, not a big deal.

Pros: - Cool Temps
- Great looks
- Low noise

Cons: - Poor VRM and Ram Heatsinks
- Poor Overclocking

Other Thoughts: I have a 6970 crossfire setup. The heatsink install went ok, did have a few issues with finding the VRM heatsink (implanted in top of box) so I had to tear it down a few times. Good practice I suppose.

I had everything setup and plugged in the new heatsinks and under load my monitor would turn off. I had a stable 990/1445 OC @ 1.3v, but the Heatsinks of the VRM and Ram are poor. Only aluminum and looking like poor quality as well. I had trouble getting the ram sinks to stick with bad adhesive tape.

All in all I couldnt overvolt anymore so I had to back down to stock but still managed 940/1375 OC.

Also note the xfire spacing was fine in my mobo and case. It may be a 3 slot card now but I had the room with a long xfire bridge.

Summery Temps

Stock:
Idle: 41c
Load (3dmark11): 85
Max Load (BOINC): 103-110

GELID GPU Cooler:
Idle: 33c
Load (3dmark11): 54
Max Load (BOINC): 76

Overall a 8c decrease when idle (I didnt expect much)
But a 31-35c decrease under max load and 3dMark 11. Thats what I was going for and why its 5 stars.