The Cooling

With the actual card out the way, let's have a closer look at the cooling solution that is on offer which is a prettied up ThermalTake Tidewater. The difference though is we also get warranty on the card.

The cooling solution isn't really complex. The coolant agent is already inside when you buy the card. The fan spins to cool it down and then the coolant leaves the unit and goes into the water block to cool down the core. The coolant then leaves the block (now warm rather than cold) and then comes back into the cooling unit to be cooled and continued on its journey again, again and again.

We can see at the bottom of the water cooler is a plastic PCI slot which helps secure the cooler in place in a free PCI slot.

Included on the card is a standard run of the mill molex connector to help power the cooling unit itself.

The side of the card shows where the coolant leaves and enters the card but also the little reservoir that holds the coolant which is already inside the card when shipped. Low refers to the coolant level and the arrow refers to which way you screw it to take the cap off. Don't get confused and think by turning it to the left will lower something while your system is turned on. You could end up with the cap off and coolant all over the back of your motherboard, which is of course something nobody wants.

While the fan is quite large, it is extremely quiet, which is fantastic. This is what helps keep the coolant cool.

The top of the card has a little power LED so you know when the card is running along with a switch that helps you set the fan speed - high meaning it's louder and low meaning it's quieter but doesn't cool as productively.

The whole card is an absolute breeze to install but unfortunately when we switched it all on we didn't get a display. One of our components where in another test system - can you figure out which one?