Hardware PNY XLR8 Liquid Cooled GTX 580 OC 1.5GB Review

pictures of where you put the rad?

 

ever since switched to ati I haven't been happier- least for me.. I use it for other things than gaming- just a better card all the way around.. sit rock at 60fps and runs some crazy ass times in pyrit (almost 3x as fast as nvidia) and eyefinity works well

these closed loops are not exactly the best thing to recommend either.. just read the corsair podcast thread, you'll see one of them in action =p proper water cooling is the way to go.. bazz story with the pump failing and the loop leaking coolant all over your expensive equipment is not unique

not saying this would do that.. but it's a very common problem, people have lost hundreds or thousands in equipment they had to replace

 

Oh come on - £440 for a graphics card that's hot and noisy! You've got to be crazy to buy this.
For that money I'd honestly expect perfection.
How many do PNY expect to sell in the current economic climate?

 

Those problems I have typically seen with the CoolIT built products.

 

I DONT GET IT.

It seemed to win all the performance tests and it was fantastic at overclocking but it got a 61%

The only problem I saw was that the stock radiator fan needed to be swapped. Isn't that something we do with all our coolers? I always use aftermarket fans.

As far as I can tell $519 it is only $50 more than the cheapest GTX580 on Newegg.com NOT $150 as the review says. That seems pretty reasonable to me for one of the best performances in all your tests.

Something smells wrong...

 

Just joined so I could post guys... Found this review while i was doing a search for the product. Nice and Informative. Just a few things Like some other users have said most of the time we swap out stock fans for better more effective ones. Up until recently was running a Asus GTX480 and tried the Coolit omni cooler solution for this as the stock is real loud, However the unit was faulty and had nothing but problems with Coolit trying to replace it so gave up then tried a zalman vf3000 and some how fried the GFX chip ( Probably human error) But I like the idea of contained water cooling solutions so I ended up ordering this PNY XLR8 as replacment.

Yes the £450 price tag is a little high but with the current supplier offering a games pack that consists of Shogun TW 2,Lost Planet 2,Operation Flash point red river and the current Nvidia game give away Batman Arkham City It dont seem to bad as the cheapest 580 I could find was £350 then add to this a discount code giving £25 off it reall was a good deal for me.

Once installed and up and running ill be happy to post some more r/l results...

Hope this helps someone

 

I think the reason it got a 61% was that for a watercooled card, it only ended up cooling the core effectively, The PCB was still hot and the fan was still noisy.

So in other words, while it did one job well, it failed to impress or do well overall and because of that it didn't get a good score.

I'm inclined to find that score was astonishingly low too, but the concerns of the PCB cooking itself is pretty apparent, especially if the rest of the PCB hits a quite toasty 75C and the core is barely there, something is up.

So while it delivers in spades in terms of performance, the cooling solution leaves a bit to be desired.

 

If they're using the stock heatsink and fan for the vrms and vram why would they get especially hot, it'll be similar cooling to that on other air-cooled cards. Don't forget some watercoolers use GPU only blocks and heatsink/fan combination's for the other stuff on high end cards.

The Scythe Slipstream 1900s are actually very good on rads and certainly have better performance than GT1850's

 

Are there actually any decent water cooling kits for the GTX580 out (with proper heatsink cover over vram and vrm)?

 

Evga hydro copper...

 

Not really a kit, you still have to get a pump, res and rad.

 

True but damn they are nice!

 

I don't think any company has put a complete kit together with a card, due to space and cost.

I personally would use a triple rad and a high flow rate pump for a GTX 580 but that is because I would overclock the card.

If I was actually only using the card at stock speed's then I would use a dual rad with a high flow rate pump.

The case that you choose would have to be capable of housing the dual rad and maybe 2 rad's if you go sli etc, or cool more than just the graphic's card.

 

Budget Watercooling solutions are in most cases just plain stupid, like for example in this case.
Besides, anyone who can afford a GTX 580 and if in the UK even more importantly can afford the electricity bill such a card causes then that Person can also afford proper Watercooling.

 

Hot and noisy? Dude what the heck do you want from a top-notch card which has peak temp of 25 °C. The fan is a stock fan that comes with every new reference card and performs average on noise levels.
Do you even read the review before you post here???

 

Meant to say: "if you replace the 120 mm fan, then it performs like a monster".

 

It isn't budget watercooling that's stupid, it's rather that this one is just poorly executed. If this had been a full block + Blower cooler + small rad with a moderately fast but quiet fan then it would've been a success. As it stands, the rad only cools the core, and the rest of the card suffers.

If they somehow managed to make a full block on the GPU, couple it with the original blower cooler and then give a fan that actually wasn't deafening on the radiator there would be a decent compromise. After all the blower isn't too loud, the liquid cooling helps the temperatures abit more and the overall the card is cooler.

 

Agree with you on that one

 

Looks like it would make SLI a bit of a problem unless you have 2x 120mm fan mounts at the back.

 

SLI for that amount of cash is insane. I'd just go with the regular GTX580s.

If I had the cash.