ICY Vision GPU Cooler Rev. 2

I purchased this cooler to replace the ineffective and extraordinarily loud stock cooler that came on my 290X. I also had to purchase the GELID Solutions CL-R9290-01-A 290X enhancement kit for it to be 100% compatible. The stock cooler was barely able to keep my 290X under 80c while sounding like a leaf blower in the process. After installing this kit the temperature with the stock GELID fans dropped to 60c in game and 31c idle. However the fans are not PWM so they turned at a flat 2K rpm and produces an annoying resonance hum. Not having a fan controller I sought out a set of PWM 92mm fans to replace them with. After some searching I found a set of 92MM GELID retaining clips on Ebay (search for 92mm 9.2cm Case Fan Mounting Mount Kit for GELID). I then went with a pair of Noctua NF-B9 fans to replace the GELID fans. I also picked up a mini 4 pin GPU to 2 x 4-pin adapter to plug them into the card's fan header. Once installed I was able to reduce the gpu temp's another 15c in game and be virtually silent doing it. This is when running games like BF4 on ultra, and Skyrim on max with custom super high resolution mods in place.Things to note for installation.When you remove the stock cooler you must use a cleaning agent on the ram chips BEFORE you attempt to attach the heatsink tape. If you do not clean them very well with something like ArctiClean the tape will not adhere very well and the heatsinks can and will fall off.The supplied TIM (thermal interface compound) that is supplied is OK but if you have a brand that you trust (for me it's Shin-Etsu) then by all means use that. I advise that you do a test application of TIM on the GPU and mount the cooler on it then pull it back off to see if the amount you applied gives adequate coverage. The last thing you want is for the GPU to have a bare spot from to little TIM being applied. This creates hot spots and could potentially damage the GPU.Set aside a good hour to perform the installation as there are a lot of screws, double sided tape, and heatsinks to install. Be sure to read the instructions and take your time and test fit everything before you go installing it all.Pros: amazing cooling performance compared to stock and simple installation for an aftermarket gpu cooler.Cons: Non PWM fans and fans do make a little bit of a hum. You need to buy the supplement kit for full compatibility.Bottom line this is a must have upgrade for anyone with a 290 or 290X with a stock cooler. The night and day difference it makes is amazing. No more heat related gpu throttling, and best of all it's all but silent now, no louder than a well built water cooling solution.

Seller got it to me on time. Seems to work great, car is the 10 deg cooler i saw in other review. Lots of pieces but instructions were clear. Replaced the stock HD 5850 fan heat sink assembly. Has options to plug into standard case power or plug into stock power on video card. Only down side is getting the ram sinks adhered to the card. a really think double sided adhesive film. a tab or split in the protectors might have made the process easier. Film is so thin its difficult telling if it had applied to the sinks. was surprised to see it came with a little tube of thermal paste. the only thing it didn't include was a screwdriver to take it all apart.

After initial installation I was alarmed by the full speed fan noise when connected to the fan header on the GPU and for a moment thought I had borked the install. However, on closer examination I noticed the provided fans do not support PWM speed control. Strike one.PRO: Cool while running. Full load 60C low fan speed compared to 80C leaf blower mode. The main heat sink is very effective.CONS:1- I decided to use the provided fan power harness with a fan controller. The harness FELL APART as I assembled it. This is not my first rodeo. I know how this stuff works. Very disappointing, shoddy construction.2- Deal killer: thermal tape is USELESS. While running heard a faint "clink" sound from within case. RAM Heat sink FELL OFF. I had thoroughly cleaned both surfaces (goo gone, alcohol). The thermal tape is a total joke.3- Upon disassembly after the RAM sinks fell off, I noticed that the heat-pipes collided with the RAM sink nearest the HDMI port. The heat-pipes stick out too far on that side of the cooler.If you decide to use this go with a good thermal adhesive. There is no turning back if you do. Be mindful of heatpipe/ramsink collision near the front/HDMI connector end of the card. Be very careful with the provided wiring harness for motherboard or PSU connection. It's laughably fragile.Contrary to the package I would NOT recommend this for GTX-680 users. Stay away unless you're OK with some hackery.Hackery: Since I had opened this thing and it was non-returnable in this state I decided to go on and make it work. This is what you need to do to get this running well on a GTX-680:1- Dremel tool or file: file down to an angle one edge of the ramsink to be placed on the RAM chip nearest and in-line with the HDMI port. A roughly 60 degree slope is needed. The sloped/pointy end should point towards the GPU and the fins on the sink should be parallel to the length of the board.2- Using pliers bend the heat pipes up towards the bottom of the cooling fins. If needed bust out a hammer and lightly beat on them. Warranty? You're probably overclocking, you laugh at warranties. Suck it up and show that heat pipe who's boss.3- Now it should all fit together but chances are the RAMsinks and VRM sinks will just fall off no matter how thoroughly you've cleaned the various surfaces. If this happens under load you could kill your GPU as the thermal sensor tracks GPU temps, not RAM or VRM. That would be bad. So...4- Get some thermal adhesive. I had some arctic alumina in my nerd tool box and used that. WARNING: there is no going back at this point. Once you pull the trigger on the epoxy you're committed. Pre-fit everything first. Make a plan and do a few sinks at a time. Read the instruction on the Arctic Cooling site if you've never used thermal epoxy before.On the unit with the busted fan harness I clipped it and spliced in a regular three pin fan cable. I did the same to the second unit (SLI) as well. I soldered the connections, if you do this so should you. Isolate them with electricians tape or heat shrink tubing.If the epoxy route is not your cup of tea and you're looking at a pile of parts (you saved the parts, right?) you are not doomed. You can ctrl-z that mess and get your card back. Search on Amazon for some 1mm thermal pad material and replace the stuff you removed in your attempt to assemble this thing. Thermal compound like arctic silver can be used on the GPU itself but you MUST use 1mm thermal pads on the other components. IN fact, just using AC on the GPU will drop your temps a few degrees, at least it did in my testing.I'm still giving this one star because it says on the package that it works with the GTX 680 and it in fact does not fit without doing some hackery. Gotta say though: the epoxy was a lot easier to deal with than that thermal tape. That stuff was a major pain to deal with in addition to being totally worthless.What Gelid could do to get stars back:1- Include more effective thermal tape or adhesive.2- Adjust the heat pipes so they do not interfere with installed RAM sinks.3- Provide real PWM fans.

Pros:- Provided a significant (over 15 degrees Celsius) reduction in the temperature of my GTX 470 card while it was working.Cons:- Fiddly individual heatsinks which will not stay attached due to the adhesive strips provided.- One of the molex pins on the fan's power connector came loose and got lost so now one of the fans doesn't work at all. My card overheats and switches off.So where does that leave me? I waited a week just to get an RMA number but am I really gonna wait around another week just to get another one of the same coolers sent to me? I probably should but I do not have the time for that.I bought this cooler instead which is much less fiddly to install and does not have pieces which fall off:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IEO8H22/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1If Gelid Customer Service would like to contact me and provide a refund then perhaps I will try their products again in future.

Also - erstmal muss ich sagen das ich keinen schlechten Kühler von ASUS mit dem HD6950 hatte.Aber was der Kühler kann ist schon richtig gut.Die Rev. 2 hat auch einen Anschluss für den PWM-Anschluss der Grafikkarte.Laut MSI Afterburner läuft die Grafikkarte bei 30-34°C im Idle bei 45% Lüfterspeed.Leider musste ich ein Heatpipe-Ende kürzen weil ein Spannungswandler im Weg war.System :- Phenom II X6 1055T (6x 2,8Ghz)- 8GB DDR2-RAM (2x Adata / 2x Crucial Ballistix Tracer)- ECS Black Series GF8200A- Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS- Linksys WMP600 (WLAN-Karte)- Adata - Netzteil 850 Watt

parfaitement compatible avec ma sapphire r9 290 qui avait le radstock.elle refroidit très bien au niveau du GPU(70° max) et des VRMs (75° max) .Par contre, prévoyez un rhéobus ou fanmate car les ventilateurs sont toujours au max (2000 rpm) et donc font un peu de bruit (mais toujours moins que le ventilo d'origine )Une bonne occasion pour garder sa carte graphique au frais et dans le silence.

Edit: 02/04/2015I thought it important to point out a few essential things about this cooler now that I've been using it for just over a year and a half.Firstly, the fans on this thing are crap. I mean they get the job done but I've already gone through two sets. My advice to you is to do what I did; get two 92mm fans with decent static pressure, hook them up onto your Icy Vision heat sink using cable ties, then to your motherboard with a fan splitter and then use Speedfan to link them to your GPU temperatures. After that, make sure Speedfan starts with your system automatically, you have to do it manually because it doesn't have that setting in the options, just Google how to do it.I used the Arctic F9 92mm fans and I highly recommend them. They're silent, really good quality and incredibly cheap - I got mine for £2.50 each. In fact I recommend you swap your fans now even if they're not broken, it's really easy and is a massive improvement on both temps and noise levels.I've included a pic to show you.End edit----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The main reason for writing this review is to let others know that this cooler does work on the Nvidia GTX 560TI 448 cores. I had to take a gamble when I bought it because no one nowhere knew whether it was compatible with my card.My installation time 2.5 hrs. Some bits were easy, some bits were a nightmare but in the end, well worth it.Now, two things that will give you a hard time installing this cooler are:1) THE INSTRUCTIONS. The instructions for these things are so bad, they actually make it harder to install. My advice is to use Google and Youtube to find your way, there are a few people who've posted videos and some forums that go through the installation process in detail. Don't throw the instructions yet, you'll need them to pick the right screws for your backplate.2) THE THERMAL PADS. These things are a nightmare, I estimate that I spent around two thirds of my installation time dealing with them. One of the reviewers here mentioned that you should buy better quality thermal pads, I wish I listened to him. The technique I found easiest when installing was to put the little heatsinks on the table and then lower the thermal pads onto them, that way I could feel the corners of the heatsinks which allowed me to line them up with the corners of the pads perfectly.It's worth noting that this cooler takes up 3 slots. If you have something plugged 2 slots away from your graphics card, either say goodbye to it or find another cooler. Also, if you have an older motherboard that has its SATA ports in-line with your PCIe slot, the cooler will cover them up. This is not a problem though, a set of cheap right angled SATA cables will fix that.Lastly, this cooler is not as quiet as people make it out to be. It's a hell of a lot quieter than the stock MSI cooler it replaced, but it's still noticeably louder than my stock CPU AMD fan.If somehow you manage to overcome all of the above challenges, you're in for a treat. This cooler performed beyond my expectations. Check this out:- Before idle temp:~52c | After idle temp:~38c- Before Burnout Paradise highest settings with SSAO: 85c+ | After: ~54c- Battlefield 3 everything on ultra *don't remember before* | After: ~59c- 10 minutes MSI Kombuster Furry and Tessy Test (GL4), 1600:900 resolution, anti-aliasing off: not sure about temps but I remember it was over 80c and that was in the winter. | After: levelled out at 62c (in a warm summer afternoon).Definitely happy I bought this thing. I guess my next step is to overclock the hell out of my card.Thanx for reading.Frankie.

Personalmente l'ho montato su una GTX 680 reference (zotac). Le performance di dissipazione sono fantastiche, silenzioso pure. Unica pecca e' stata la necessita' di piegare leggermente una delle code delle heat pipe, per lasciare abbastanza spazio ad uno dei dissipatori per la VRAM.Consigliatissimo per qualsiasi scheda nvidia (dalla 9800 in su)

Remplace un dissipateur de Radeon HD 6950 d'origine avec une vis de serrage autour du gpu cassée.Pack complet et bien fourni pour s'adapter à tout modèle.Plus haut mais moins profond que le dissipateur d'origine il est adapté pour une tour de faibles dimensions.Sans être parfaitement silencieux (on entend un peu plus le souffle d'air que mon dissipateur d'origine au repos) avec une vitesse de rotation fixe (alimenté sur la carte mère en chassis fan) il refroidit mieux d'au moins 10-12° en toute situation (en dessous de 40° au repos et de 70° au lieu de plus de 80° en charge) et ça malgré une installation imparfaite par ma faute! (3 points de serrage sur 4 au gpu et certains patchs thermiques de ram mal appliqués ne transmettant pas parfaitement la chaleur dans les radiateurs)Il est donc parfait si l'objectif est derefroidir efficacement sa carte graphique en jeu sans sacrifier des décibels de tranquilité.4 étoiles parce qu'il n'est pas parfait:Malgré un manuel en français, le tableau des pièces est en anglais du coup je me suis un peu emmêlé pour les patchs thermiques et les radiateurs à appliquer sur les puces.Les vis et entretoises de serrage autour gpu sont plutôt fines donc ne pas trop forcer, il y en a une de chaque de rechange mais j'en ai cassé 2...