Some words from GELID themselves:

The “Rev. 2 ICY VISION” cooler contains 5 power heatpipes in a unique heatpipe constellation. The heatpipes are interlaced into 85 optimized high-quality Aluminium fins. Together with a flat stack fin soldered Copper base, they enable the most efficient heat transmission and dissipation from GPU core in its class. Besides the heatsink, two 92mm UV-reactive fans with 11 blades in S-shape generate 20% additonal air flow than traditional fans. The fan contains a high-quality ball bearing to ensure a longer lifetime in high temperature environments.

The Icy Vision is packaged in blister style packaging. The design heavily utilizes the the light green that has come to be associated with GELID. It protected the cooler well.

GeLid Icy Vision front packaging

GeLid Icy Vision rear packaging

The Belly of the beast:

The very first impression we were struck with after removing the Gelid Icy Vision Rev2 from its packaging was, “Wow, this is light.” We anticipated something much heavier considering the sheer weight of the stock coolers on high end GPUs these days.

In the photo below, you can see the 5 heatpipes of the cooler and how they disperse to the dual heatsinks.

Gelid Icy Vision underside

The top view of the cooler showcases the dual 90mm fans.

Gelid Icy Vision top view

From the side, you can see that the Gelid Icy is actually quite tall. We will discuss what this means for the clearance of the heatsink a bit later on.

Gelid Icy Vision side view

The Icy Vision Revision 2 ships with mounting hardware for over 25 different video cards. If you have pretty much any of the last three generations put out by ATI/AMD or Nvidia, they have you covered. One caveat for owners of 6900 series hardware: you’ll need to pick up an additional pack of RAMsinks, called the Enhancement Kit.

Heatsinks and Backplates

Next: Our Test Bed

Many in the PC community know the name iBuyPower for offering quality PC desktops, and laptops in use for gaming, workstations, and media. The California-based company has been around for ten years, and in that time they have accumulated many awards from sites like Maximum PC, AnandTech , PC World, and Gamepro just to name a few.

Today we get a chance to get our hands on iBuyPower’s latest custom gaming PC desktop dubbed the Gamer Power BTS 11. This rig  is part of iBuyPower’s back to school promotion which includes an Intel i5 2500k processor, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit operating system. The system is retailing for $999.00. Question is, is this custom rig worth your money? Let’s find out.

Packaging

One thing you have to give iBuyPower credit for is that they seem to go out of their way to make sure you receive your product as damage free as possible. This is clearly evident in the packaging of the Gamer Power BTS 11 we received.

The rig came in a brown box with the iBuyPower logo on it. And, yes, the box is big.

Opening up the box we found large thick foam padding. This padding was protecting the box the rig itself was packed it.

We just wanted to note that the thickness of the main pad is approximately that of a double AA battery standing up.

Removing the foam protection revealed the box of the case used in building the rig, the NZXT Phantom in white (more on that later). iBuyPower packed the actual rig within the NZXT box, utilizing the styrofoam protection, and the plastic bag covering the case itself was housed in.

Finally, we free the actual system from the styrofoam protection and the plastic covering used by NZXT to protect the case, and bingo, we have our prize. In our opinion, iBuyPower gets a gold star in this area.

Standing back for a moment, and looking at the case itself, we were taken back a little at the aesthetics of the case. The white just seemed to shine brightly, and the unusual design made us even more curious to see how well the rig was put together. Opening the side panel revealed yet another safety feature iBuyPower utilized. A blue foam-fit bag was protecting the components of the rig inside.

Next: Specs

If extreme overclocking had a name, it’d be k|ngp|n. Vince Lucido (a/k/a “k|ngp|n”) is arguably the man who got such things started in the United States. Back when most people were still gawking at the extreme ventures of a few folks pushing overclocking to new heights with water cooling, this guy started to bring the truly extreme methods of employing liquid nitrogen (LN2) to achieve even more outrageous performance. While Vince was not the first person to use LN2 too cool a computer system, he was one of the very first to experiment with cooling not only the CPU, but also GPUs and motherboards with the cryogenic liquid. Breaking world records and taking overclocking and benchmarking to the extreme is his passion, and he has done it over and over again.

Here is a brief video introduction to k|ngp|n.

When k|ngp|n got started, one of the major hurdles was how to properly cool his components with LN2. Since devices did not exist with which he could accomplish thos, he started designing and building prototype LN2 containers (“pots”) which he could mount to the computer hardware in order to apply the LN2 to effectively cool the components. He started out doing this for his own adventures, but very quickly became overwhelmed by requests from other enthusiasts seeking to buy copies of the containers he was building. Seeing a golden opportunity, in 2006, k|ngp|n founded his business kingpincooling.com (aka “KPC”) and is now mass-producing his pots for enthusiasts all over the world. And R&D has not stopped, so he has continuously reevaluated and improved his designs to perfect his containers according to user demands and the changes in computer hardware. That brings us to the subject of our review today, the new line of KPC’s LN2 containers.

The new KPC LN2 containers

Note: The CPU and GPU container internals have been blocked out at k|ngp|n’s request. The containers shown in our pictures are pre-production components, and look slightly different than the production models; please see the images on the next page for details.

Next: A closer look…

Packaging:

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti SC:

Specifications and Features:

• Free version of 3DMark 11 Advanced Edition included. Users can redeem their code when the product is registered on EVGA.com. This is a $19.99 value. For more information, please visit http://www.evga.com/articles/00594/
• Overclocked out of the box – This card offers a performance increase out of the box, attached is the product spec sheet which includes the details on clockspeeds.
• Special Edition EVGA Precision v2.0.1 – We created a special look of our popular software specifically for the EVGA GTX 560 Ti. This utility allows overclocking, monitoring and fanspeed adjustments. It is located on the DVD that ships with your card. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/precision/
• EVGA OC Scanner – EVGA OC Scanner is fully supported by the EVGA GTX 560 Ti. This utility allows you to benchmark, monitor and stress test your EVGA card. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/ocscanner/
• Voltage Tuning with EVGA ELEET– EVGA ELEET allows voltage tuning on a wide range of EVGA cards, including the GTX 560 Ti. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/eleet/
• EVGA Customer Support – EVGA’s acclaimed customer support can be contacted by support ticket, email, and phone. For more information, please visit  http://www.evga.com/support/
• EVGA Community – Active game servers, thriving forums, integrated chat and social networks allow users to ask questions or get help wherever they feel the most comfortable. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/community/
• EVGA Warranty – EVGA offers a variety of warranties to fit your needs, including our exclusive 10 year Extended Warranty. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/community/
• EVGA Advanced RMA Program – EVGA offers this service to help reduce the downtime of a customer’s system by shipping a replacement product first and lets our valued customer deal with the EVGA directly for quick and efficient service. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/ear/
• EVGA Step-Up Program – EVGA protects your investment for 90 days following your purchase. Qualifying products can be upgraded, one time only, to a select greater performing product. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/stepup/

Next: Test System & Overclocking

The GeForce GTX 590:

Specifications:

Next: Test System & Overclocking

With the new release of the GTX 550 Ti upon us, we have the ASUS factory overclocked GTX550 Ti DirectCU TOP for review today. The 550 Ti is not intended to a be top contender in the market, but rather a lower-end card with great upgrading potential via overclocking and SLI. With the ASUS 550 Ti coming with the DirectCU cooling solution, we anticipate seeing some very low temperatures. The ASUS GTX 550 also comes with SAP (Super Alloy Power) design which is said to deliver 15% performance boost over non-SAP models, 2.5 times longer lifespan, and run 35C cooler. Now let’s move on past all of the niceties and get on to why you are really here, the actual results. Read on…

Packaging:

The ASUS GTX550 Ti:

Specifications:

Next: Test System & Overclocking

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti:

Specifications and features:

Next: Test System & Overclocking

Packaging:

The Zotac 560 Ti:

Specifications & Features:

Next: Test System & Overclocking

Test System:

• CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @ 4Ghz
• Motherboard: ASUS Rampage III Extreme
• RAM: Mushkin Blackline 3×2GB DDR3
• Video Card: ASUS GTX580 (Drivers: 266.58 WHQL, 263.09 WHQL, 262.99 WHQL)
• Power Supply: Antec TPQ 1200W
• Storage: Western Digital black 500GB
• OS: Windows 7 64bit

Release Notes for 266.58 WHQL Drivers:

Supports the newly released GeForce GTX 580 and GeForce GTX 570 GPUs.

Increases performance for GeForce 400 Series and 500 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. the latest Release 260 drivers. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

GeForce GTX 580:

Up to 7% in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 12% in Battleforge (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF Very High)
Up to 11% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 7% in Dirt 2 (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 7% in Far Cry 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF Dark Tower)
Up to 5% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 9% in Stone Giant (SLI 1920×1200, DOF on)
Up to 8% in Unigine Heaven v2.1 (SLI 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)

Next: Synthetic Benchmarks

The video card:

Specifications and features:

Next: Test System & Overclocking