Is Gainward GTX 580 Phantom 3GB reference design?

Hardware GPU
1

Hi Tek,

I'm thinking of getting a full watercooling block for my Gainward GTX 580 Phantom 3GB. Since its an older card the only waterblocks that are still produced in Europe are HEATKILLERS from Watercool (http://watercool.de/en). They have two kind of waterblocks for GTX 580 cards:

  • a GTX 580 (reference PCB) waterblock
  • a GTX 580 (reference PCB without integrated heatspreader) waterblock

So here is my problem: will one of these two fit on my card? I've searched everywhere, but can not find any info on the PCB design of my card.

If neither of them fit, I'm going to sell my card to a friend and buy a new one, because I really want to try my hand at watercooling. So here is my second question: what are the specification i have to make sure I check when buying a new card ? The reason I ask this is that I have no idea what card my system can handle and I don't want to waste money on a card that is 'too much' for my rig. Here is what I have in my case:

  • ASUS P8P67 mobo + RealTek ACL892 onboard audio
  • Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz
  • 4 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
  • 112GB OCZ-AGILITY3
  • 2 Samsung 1080p monitors
Ow yeah, better also tell you guys what I actually do with my rig: lots of gaming, drawing with Wacom tablet in PS CS6 and occasionally ripping my dvd's to put on my NAS so I can stream them from the TV downstairs.

LOL. Big thanks for everybody that managed to read through this untill the end :D

2

Your CPU won't bottleneck you, so it seems that you can get any card you want if money's not your problem. I don't really know much about watercooling a GPU, but from what I found, the PCB is a bit longer than the reference design

3

did u checked EK Cooling Configurator?

great way to look at the PCB, normaly tehy had a pic from almost ervery Grafikscard out there