PNY XLR8 Liquid Cooled GTX 580 OC 1.5GB Review

Performance Analysis

Touting the biggest factory overclock we've ever seen on a GTX 580 1.5GB by quite some margin, it wasn't surprising to see the XLR8 GTX 580 1.5GB bettering all the other GTX 580s in the graphs. In Dirt 2 at 1,920 x 1,080 with 4x AA, the XLR8 GTX 580 OC stretched out a 5fps lead in its minimum frame rate above the Asus Matrix GTX580 Platinum, which managed 117fps. This was also 15fps faster than a stock speed GTX 580 1.5GB - a healthy 14 per cent increase.

Call of Duty: Black Ops resulted in less marked gains, the biggest being a 3fps advantage over the Asus card in the minimum frame rate at 2,560 x 1,600 with 4x AA. Meanwhile, in Arma II at the same resolution, the XLR8 GTX 580 OC climbed to second place in the table with a minimum frame rate of 29fps - nearly 12 per cent faster than a stock speed card. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 also saw healthy gains - at 1,920 x 1,080, for example, the 7fps rise in the minimum frame rate was equivalent to a 13 per cent increase over a stock speed card.

The hefty overclock also resulted in the XLR8 GTX 580 OC drawing an additional 37W over and above the Asus card. Thankfully, the cooling system performed excellently, with the load delta T of 25°C less than half of that of a stock card and 9°C cooler than the Asus card too. Sadly, this awesome result was marred by several issues. While the pump and stock cooler were inaudible, the 120mm fan included with the XLR8 GTX 580 OC proved to be very noisy and failed to spin down at all.

This is a shame, because with such low temperatures there would be ample room to reduce noise and still have awesome cooling. The obvious solution would be to purchase a slower fan or fan controller, but it's a shame PNY didn't nip this issue in the bud.


More worryingly, the combined pump and waterblock takes up a huge amount of space inside the cooler, restricting airflow. As the cooler has clearly had its fan speed reduced, this resulted in the rear of the PCB becoming scorchingly hot - while the GPU core is well catered for cooling-wise, the same can't be said about the rest of the card. While we didn't experience any heat-related crashes, we have concerns about the XLR8 GTX 580 OC's potential to cook itself in the long term. Our concerns were also backed up by using a laser temperature sensor, which measured the rear of the PCB reaching a delta T of up to 75°C, while a stock GTX 580 1.5GB came in at 20°C less.

Overclocking turned out to very productive, though, and we were able to push the GPU to a staggering 940MHz - only the MSI N580GTX Lighting Xtreme Edition managed a higher frequency. We only managed to push the memory to 1.15GHz (4.6GHz effective), though - the same as the Asus Matrix GTX580 Platinum. This was enough to see the minimum frame rate in Bad Company 2 at 1,920 x 1,080 rise to 68fps, with Arma II at the same settings seeing a 5fps increase.

Conclusion

Our testing resulted in polarised findings. On the one hand, the PNY XLR8 Liquid Cooled GTX 580 OC 1.5GB is awesomely fast, very overclockable and kept our GPU very cool indeed. However, this cooling comes at a price - its 120mm fan was very noisy, which partially defeats the point of water-cooling the card in the first place. Meanwhile, the remainder of the stock cooler, while quiet, also struggled to cool the rest of the card as well as a stock GTX 580 1.5GB.

The result is an expensive card that, instead of filling the gap between the best air-cooled cards and a fully water-cooled card, is inferior to both. As such, you’re better off either investing in water-cooling your GPU properly with a full-cover waterblock, or opting for a cheaper, quieter, air-cooled card.

Addendum: Since publishing this review, PNY got in contact with us and has confirmed the following: 'the components’ thermals on our GTX 580 LC products are well within the thermal limits of the power components on the back of the GTX 580 LC board. Their thermal MAX are up to 125C. Furthermore, the PCB design does meet the minimum “Tg” of 140C & “Td” 295C ratings of the Standard PCB Specification for RoHS material.' Thus, although we still have concerns about the high temperature of the card, as it's within spec, we have ammended the cards scores at the end of this review.