14 DAY TRIAL // There are certain video card cooling systems that, when paired with suitable video cards, end up creating veritably monstrous graphics adapters which are as large as they are mighty.
As end-users no doubt expected, the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) proved to be quite packed with all sorts of products.
Laptops based on the new Intel and AMD CPUs, as well as tablets of many shapes and sizes, were the main highlight.
Nevertheless, video cards remained among the prominent devices on show, some of them even being more massive than people would be used to.
That said, the ASUS GeForce GTX 580 DirectCu may not have been present at the show, but it has been revealed to be nearing completion.
According to NordicHardware, the card has the eponymous, massive triple-slot cooling system, in addition to a custom PCB (printed circuit board).
Essentially, the cooler utilizes three copper heatpipes, all of which make direct contact with the GPU, as well as a strong VRM and two 100 mm fans.
The 8-phase VRM draws power from two 8-pin PCI Express power connectors and boasts high-grade components, like a proadlizer made by NEC, whose purpose is to manage the power supplied to the GPU.
There is another interesting fact, namely that the power circuit is fully localized, making this a video controller that drawn absolutely no power from the PCI Express slot itself.
Like all NVIDIA GTX 580 boards, this particular iteration has 512 CUDA cores, 1,536 MB of GDDR5 memory, a memory interface of 384 bits and the GF110 GPU.
The clock speeds are not known, but the photos do show the existence of a DisplayPort and an HDMI output, in addition to two DVI connectors.
All in all, the ASUS GTX 580 DirectCu will run at 80 degrees Celsius instead of the 90 of the reference model, and will produce a noise of 31 dBA (stock model has 42 dBA).
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