While the heatsink assembly carries the ZOTAC name it is infact designed by ZALMAN. The VF3000 cooler has proven so popular that ZOTAC have used it to cool there top end GPU and for very good reason as we will see later in the review.



Removing the cooler was a very simple task given that it is only attached via the four large spring loaded screws we mentioned earlier. Thankfully, the assembly is protected by small rubber washes to prevent power circuit shorts.



The heatsink base was very flat but none to reflective, instead having a brushed rather than mirrored effect. Contact with the GPU was however very good with just the right amount of paste used.



The heatsink plate is full copper and is soldered to 5x 6mm copper heatpipes which spread the heatload to the aluminium finned heatsink array. 3 of the heatpipes stretch over the power circuitry while the remaining two head off toward the rear of the card. The vented I/O plate is pointless in that no air is directed toward this area due to the orientation of the fins bieing perpendicular to this area.



Overall I was very impressed with the heatsink design. I do have one reservation though in that the aluminium shroud is very easy to flex and as such during installation I managed to bend the shroud ever so slighty which then interfered with one of the fans rotations. It was however an easy remedy but not something one should have to endure.



Here we see the card partially declothed. Despite having the massive VF3000 cooler, both the memory and VRMs are cooled by an all-in-one aluminium heatsink.



The secondary heatsink is held in place via four small Philips screws and makes use of thermal tape as a means of thermal interface material hinting that this card generates quite a lot of heat not just from the core but from other on-board chips as well.



The CHiL CHL 8266 voltage controller enables voltage control and monitoring, making it an excellent addition for overclockers. The including Firestorm utility allows for clockspeed adjustment but unfortunately not voltage so should you wish to increase the cards voltage you can still do so by using MSI's Afterburner utility.



All round solid capacitors are used in conjunction with the MagnaChip MOSFETs which should provide solid, clean power to the card ensuring high stable overclocks are afforded.



I am pleased to report that ZOTAC have chosen Hynix over Samsung as the manufacturer for their memory. As we have seen in previous reviews, Hynix has consistantly out performed Samsung so I look forward to evaluating the overclocking performance of this memory. Hopefully the H5GQ2H24MFR modules seen on this sample will not disappoint!



Finally, we arrive at the heart of the ZOTAC GTX580 AMP2!, the GF110 core. PAcking over 3 billion transistors, it is currently the best core NVIDIA has to offer until the advent of Kepler. Thankfully all of those transistors are protected by a nickel plated copper integrated heatspreader which acts both to spread the heatload of the core and to protect the silicon beneath.

Let's move on to the test setup we will be using for todays review...