Koolance VID-NX580 GeForce GTX 580/570 Water Block Review

Up close with the VID-NX580

It is interesting that as the performance gains between generations have continued to be smaller the interior looks of your system have become more and more important. It used to be wow I have a PC and nobody cared that it was a simple beige box with bare steel inside. Then the outside was the focus with colors and mods to make a PC look like anything but a PC. However, once people started putting windows on cases it became all about the internals. Lights, sleeving, LED fans, and custom paint job made interiors look amazing to anyone lucky enough to have a peek.

It is obvious that Koolance didn’t just design the VID-NX580 to have great cooling performance for these hot FERMI’s but also to be stunning works of art. The true testament to this was my 2 year old son saying “WOW” when I opened up the package and he saw the first shimmer of nickel.

The packaging is a simple black box sporting the Koolance logo and with stickers for the model and name. If you purchased one of these you do not need fancy graphics to convince you to buy it, you went to find this one.

Inside the block is held snugly in a dense foam block along with the included items.

Koolance sends along a small tube of thermal paste, two sizes of thermal pads (although you only use one size), instruction manual, thermal pad placement diagram, and a bag of screws and plastic insulation washers to mount the block to the card after you remove the air cooling.

The front of the block is stunning milled black Acetal and silver nickel plated copper with a stainless steel accent plate across the bottom and contrasting black and stainless steel screws. The top G1/4 ports come with plugs installed on the front that can be reversed to the back depending on your cooling loop design.

The back of the VID-NX580 is all milled nickel plated copper with the most critical contact areas polished to a mirror like finish. You can see the spot that touches the IHS as well as the memory and VRM’s. This view gives you a better look at the G1/4 ports for the in and out water fittings.

We took all the 2mm screws out of the block and pulled it apart to see the internals. The inside is very nicely milled and you can see the large micro channels right over the GPU for maximum thermal transfer. The VRM’s also get a nice channel section but do not require the same density of the GPU. This is a great design that is similar to the current top performing CPU water cooling blocks like the Koolance CPU 370.

One word of caution, it took us five tries to get the large O-Ring to seal right and not leak after taking this block apart. Try to avoid disassembling this block unless absolutely necessary to save yourself hours of headaches.