Which AIB partner (in your opinion) makes the best nonreference heatsink/fan?

[tviceman]

There are plenty of them out there, the more notable ones (in my mind) being Asus's triple slot direct copper behemoth, MSI's twin frozr II and III, gigabytes windforce series... Which one is your favorite and which one do you think is the best (if it's not your favorite)?

I personally like MSI's twin frozr heatsink design (it's durable, heavy, and looks good), but Asus's triple slot cards might actually be the more effective solution at balancing cooling vs. noise.... I don't know for sure. I wish that, instead of reviews on performance, there were more reviews pitting the cooling solutions against each other to see which ones are quieter at equal temps and which ones cool more effectively at the same fan speeds.

 

[AFQ]

MSI Twin Frozr are the best ones. They look good and perform good too. ASUS's DirectCU design is a bit too gimicky and doesn't perform that good. WindForce from GIGABYTE is also good but loses first place to MSI.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

ASUS DCU design is bulky...very bulky
MSI TF wins for a fact.
Gigabyte has a close second

 

[Lonyo]

Gigabyte manage 3 fans in a dual slot design, and they remember to put a bracket on to reinforce the card, so their design is pretty good. Don't know how effectively the whole "windforce" aspect works, but my Windforce card is pretty icy.

 

[3DVagabond]

I used to really like the Asus DCII triple slot cards. Besides the cooler the PCB is also very much improved over the reference. After reading this thread though, I'm not too keen on them any more. The Gigabyte WF3 has been getting great reviews performance/noise, but the PCB's seem reference quality, at best (not terrible mind you). The MSI TFII/III has gone to the top of my list because you can get it on improved PCB's (Cyclone/Lightning) with better O/C features and power stages than the reference designs.