Silent Cooling, Beyond Your Senses...

As 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 on it to identity their brand and product. Gainward didn't follow that approach, and designed its own solution which they have done also in the past with their various Golden Sample edition graphics cards. The red cooling solution covers the whole card as a dual slot design and cools it quietly and efficiently. But let's just see what it looks like in a bit more detail...

So how do we get started, well the easy way by just looking at the card and the first that comes to mind is the red cover at both sides of the video card. Not only something that is looking great but also protects the front of the cards itself. 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 plates cover the almost the complete front of the card, except the middle of the card. This is where the heatsink and fan resides for the intake of air to cool the underlying GPU heatsink. The red cover plates do add up some extra stiffness to the card as with the massive black heatsink it would leave room for easy damage to the cooling as such. But having applied the two cover plates at each side of the card add all it needs to make this cooling solution quite an innovation.

Removing the red cover plates is an easy task. By just removing the screws, the plates come off and we get a good view on the heatsink that Gainward is using. And in contrast with the red cover plates, the heatsink itself is black with a fan in the middle. The entire design of the fan and heatsink is somehow familiar. These resemble somehow to some of the actual heatpipe CPU coolers. Though this heatsink is somehow bigger and almost twice the size of the underlying fan. At the top of the card we can see the two heatpipes coming out and going back into the black heatsink. This means that the base GPU cooler is actually cooled via a double action as you have the fan blowing on it and the heatpipes that move the heat from the GPU base to the upper heatsink. And that heatsink is once again cooled by the large fan in between.

Looking at the heatsink alone you can see it is build out of large straight fins which will let the air through that the fan underneath is sucking towards the card. And 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 under the heatsink, and draws the air from the top through the fins towards the lower placed GPU base. An inventive way for keeping the GPU cool as the air is drawn over the large heatsink, which are cooling the duel heatpipes, which in return cool the GPU base cooler. 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 these benefit from the airflow generated by the fan.

Turning over the BLISS 8800 GT Golden Sample accelerator we can spot the black iron back plate that holds the heatsink in place. Once again Gainward went to think out of the box and came up with a mechanism to keep the heatsink firmly fitted. This is done by using a bigger back plate that holds the heatsink firmly attached. This bigger back plate is needed due to the larger heatsink and the extra cooling that is also provided to the memory chips. While all others brands just use screws to hold it all together, 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 is found on the reference NVIDIA design. In our opinion this is worth going for the pre-overclocked Golden Sample version, designed by Gainward.

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 then the reference design, which in the end turns well in their favor. As with all GeForce 8800 GT series, you will find an extra PCI Express power connection to provide the Golden Sample with the required power. And on top of that you also see a smaller heatsink to cool down the power circuitry. As with all high-end graphics cards the PCI Express interface alone is not sufficient to fully power the G92 chip to unleash its stunning visual processing capabilities. Well at least if you don't own a PCI Express 2.0 capable mainboard, if else the power from this new PCI Express will just be sufficient on its own.