Airflow and Cooling, a Unique Design...

As previously mentioned Gainward didn't just take NVIDIA's reference design and put its sticker on it. Instead they went their own way and changed the cooler and made the card look really fancy. Actually when you look back at the reference cooling solution, it is quite small though sufficient to get the job done. Most of the partners are using the reference cooler and just putting their own sticker in it to identity their brand and product. Gainward didn't follow that approach, and designed its own solution. The red cooler covers the whole card and cools it very quietly and efficiently. But let's just see what it looks like in a bit more detail.

Where shall we start? Well we will take it the easy way and look at the top of the card which is actually a red cover with a black cover maze. This red frame gives it a nice touch and feeling, like a Porsche amongst the cars. It adds extra protection though looks sharp and strong. The black cover with holes protects the remainder of the card and provides an efficient way for increased airflow. Maybe not immediately what Gainward had in mind when they came up with this cooling design, but it certainly does that on top. The red cover with black maze covers the entire front of the card and already shows a much more robust heatsink and fan, to cool the graphics core.

Removing the red/black cover plate is an easy task. By just removing the screws, the cover comes off and we get a good view on the heatsink that Gainward is using. Following the black cover, the heatsink itself is also black with a fan in the middle. The design of the fan and heatsink is somehow familiar... Do you remember the older CPU coolers? The ones from before you had those aluminum and copper based solutions? Well at that time you could buy some decent black heatsink with fan on top, with a variant that had a higher heatsink and the fan put into the heatsink itself. Just to give you a bit where we got this small deja vu... Though this heatsink is somehow bigger with more slats.

Looking at the heatsink alone you can see it is not that high and with large bowed fins to guide the air. Due to this the Gainward cooling solution is a dual slot design, with higher performance and cooling ability than the reference cooler by NVIDIA. The fan is placed on top of the heatsink, and draws the air from the top through the fan blades towards the heatsink. An inventive way for keeping the GPU cool as the air is not going in one direction through the fins of the heatsink, but is spread circle wise over the full heatsink. Via this way Gainward achieves an optimized airflow and outstanding cooling for both the GPU and even the memory chips. The memory chips which are placed around the GPU and benefits from the 360° wide airflow generated through the fan and bowed fins.

When turning over the BLISS 8600 GTS Golden Sample accelerator we can spot the four grey iron screws which hold the heatsink in place. Nothing special this time, but this mechanism does keep the heatsink firmly fitted. Each of these four screws doesn't make direct contact with the PCB as the card it fitted with sort of plastic ring that sits between the screw and the PCB. While all others brands just use screws and no real protection, it certainly proves that Gainward is showing to be superior with their products. An innovative design that looks good and does stand out in the crowd, beating the standard cooling which feature the reference NVIDIA design.

Gainward added as well an exhaust grill that comes with the rear I/O plate. You can find a dual DVI and S-Video output on the rear I/O plate. The exhaust grill is positioned just above these interfaces and will guide the hot air out of the system. As mentioned Gainward opted for a different approach than the reference design, which in the end will be in their favor. As with all GeForce 8600 GTS series, you will find a PCI Express power connection to provide the Golden Sample with the required power. For the GTS version, the PCI Express interface alone is not sufficient to fully power the G84 chip to unleash its stunning visual processing capabilities.