Pros: - This heatsink does a great job at keeping your GPU temps down. I noticed a 10-15° decrease in temperature after replacing the stock cooler with this. - Allows for a higher overclocking headroom. - Almost as good as watercooling with a custom loop at a relatively low price.
Cons: - It's pretty heavy. Your card will sag, guaranteed, so maybe think about getting a gpu bracket to support it. - Thermal pads for the memory heatsinks don't stick well at first and kept coming off while installing.
Overall Review: I would recommend this product if you can get past those two minor cons. I even bought a PWM 4-pin to GPU mini 4-pin adapter so that the fans I put on the heatsink can be controlled by the GPU based on temperature. If you get pretty quiet fans you can have them go 100% to provide silent but effective cooling!
Pros: - Temps are relatively cool - Fan isn't too loud - Was able to overclock it to 1170mHz core clock / 1750mHz memory clock - Great performer on my 1440p 144z Freesync monitor. - Sexy backplate. I'm glad these are becoming more standard on aftermarket coolers.
Cons: - PCI-E power cords are hard to take out since the cooler blocks them. This is the reason I took off an egg. I feel XFX should've made a cut out where the power cords are for easy access.
Overall Review: Other than the PCI-E power cord issue, this card is a beast and would recommend getting it over a GTX 970 or if you don't wanna spend $30 - $50 extra for the better coolers in the Sapphire/MSI/ASUS 390s.
Pros: - The cooling on this card is very effective. My card probably tops out at 73-75 degrees, and right now it's summer in SoCal. - Fans are quiet. They are not annoyingly loud at 100% speed. They also do not spin until the temps reach 60 degrees. Pretty neat! - This card is able to handle anything at 1440p and 60 fps or more. I'm having a blast playing DOOM with over 100 fps. - The Spectra LED lighting with the 7 different colors helps this card fit in with any build! It also has different lighting modes such as: breathing, static, and cycling.
Cons: Couple minor cons but not enough to take off an egg from me: - The card is a bit heavy so it will sag. Fortunately i have a GPU bracket from Puget that supports it and prevents sag. I suggest getting one of these, not just for this card but also future cards you may own. - The voltage is limited to only 1.095 volts, which in turn limits its overclocking headroom. This isn't a huge con though because all the other 1070's and 1080's have this same limit and many of you may not be interested in overclocking.
Overall Review: Zotac gets overshadowed by the likes of EVGA, MSI, and ASUS, which is unfortunate because their card can really perform as well as those brand's respective cards. All in all, a great card from Zotac that gets the job done in cooling, looks, and performance. A recommended buy from me!