Gainward CoolFX PowerPack!

Making conclusions on the CoolFX is tricky: on the one hand, it's self-evident that a water-cooled card can be overclocked far higher than an air-cooled one. But given the pace of development of graphics cards and the price of the package as a whole, it looks like an expensive and inconvenient way to squeeze only a little more performance out of your GPU. We'd be much keener on the CoolFX if it came with a processor and north bridge heatsink in addition to the GPU sink for a complete water-cooled system. As it is, the CoolFX is a lot of hassle to go to just to cool your graphics card, even for those of us who are hell-bent on wringing every last iota of performance from our components.

Author: David Fearon