14 DAY TRIAL // Although Nvidia certainly did a great job when it designed the stock cooling system of its latest flagship graphics card, the GTX 590, there are still those who think that such a high performance solution should be installed only in a watercooling loop, so Danger Den went out and designed a custom waterblock for the card, dubbed the DD-GTX590.
The full-coverage block is made using a copper base and a smoked acrylic top and should be compatible with all the GTX 590 models that follow Nvidia's reference printed circuit board (PCB) layout.
Right now, this would mean basically all the GTX 590's that are available on the market, as no manufacturer has yet customized the card to this extent.
According to Danger Den, the waterblock was designed so that it would cover not only the two GF110 GPUs, but also the memory, VRM and I/O chips and should provide additional stiffness to the card as it packs some specially designed PCB contact pads.
In addition, all waterblocks come completely assembled, including gaskets, have been hand lapped for better performance and are pressure tested before shipment.
Pricing has been established at $119.95 and the DD-GTX590 is currently in stock on the company's website.
The Nvidia GTX 590 is the company's fastest graphics card to date and is powered by dual GF110 cores, the same GPU that is used for the GTX 580.
As a result, the card packs no less than 1024 CUDA cores, 128 texturing units, 96 ROP units, and a pair of independent 384-bit wide memory interfaces that connect to 3GB of GDDR5 video buffer. The two cores are clocked at 607MHz and the memory works at 853MHz (3414MHz data rate).
These specs translate into a “real world application” TDP of 365W, according to Nvidia, and half of the heat generated is expelled right back into the system's chassis, so a watercooling solution should fit the card really well.