ACX Cooling vs DirectCU II?

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dhappy

Weaksauce
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Mar 19, 2013
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Just wondering if anyone has had experience using both these types of coolers on their graphics cards. Honestly, these look exactly the same to me but I've liked what ASUS has done by using custom PCBs for their models.

Does one do a better job at cooling? Quieter? Higher quality components? Overclocking capabilities?

This would greatly help my next GPU purchase upgrade!
 
ACX its better both in noise and cooling performance.. ASUS DCII its more comparable vs the EVGA Signature 2 cooler...
 
I have the Asus GTX 770 DirectCU II and it doesn't go above 71 degrees load. I also don't have the greatest airflow right now.
 
Does anyone have the fan specs for both coolers? It looks like ACX Cooling uses larger fans so it should cool more efficiently.
 
I don't have direct experience with the ACX coolers, but have had decent luck reviewing the DCII coolers. Keep in mind that DCII is NOT a single cooler. It is more of a brand of coolers that varies depending on the card's price point. Ie I am very impressed with the one on the 7970, but not very excited by the 7850 one (with regards to build quality and general awesomeness)
 
Techpowerup has reviews for the ACX, Windforce, Twinfrozr, DCII, as well as the reference GTX 760. Make sure to also account for voltage, clockspeed, and dBa differences and not just temperature.

Also keep in mind that while the cooler branding may be the same there might be differences in the actual designs from card to card. As such you may want to look at specific performance for the card you are thinking off. In other words the Asus DCII GTX 760 may perform differently relative to it's competitors than the Asus DCII HD 7850.
 
It depends on the card you are looking at. I loved the dc2 cooler that was on my 660ti's (so silent), but the dc2 cooler on the 780 for example, looks slightly different.

The acx cooler, keeps my 780 temperatures ranging from 55-63c when gaming. Both cooling solutions are quite good, I would just go with the one you find at a better price.
 
I've decided EVGA; even though I like the badass look of the DC2 coolers, ASUS customer service cannot compare with EVGA from what I've been reading. I'll be looking into GTX 770 unless AMD has something to fight back with.
 
I loved my direct cu2 cooler on my gtx 460. I never heard the fan and the load temps were always really low, even overclocked to gtx 560 clocks. I have to admit that the new revision on the 700 series cards looks really cool too.

With that said you have to be careful. The model of cooler might be named the same but will be completely different with different video cards.
 
dhappy, yeah ASUS doesn't seem to get rave reviews with their customer service. There's a thread around here where a 7950 DirectCU II caught fire and they are denying and fighting the RMA. I definitely won't be buying any ASUS cards now even if they do look nice and match their ROG boards very well.
 
Asus Direct CUII on GTX670/680 was pretty good, got many awards on many sites, including editor choice for how quiet it was on SPCR. The new DIRECTUII seems more aimed for lower temps than quiet operation, even if they do say for both, check reviews on new cards for more details.

On the contrary, MSI seems to have balanced really well their Twin Frozr IV and the new gen of cards, GTX760/770 and 780 all have gotten very good reviews in temps and noise, same places like guru3d that said expected more about the DIRECTCUII are raving about how quiet and cool the MSI are. If i were picking right now would be MSI.

EVGA idk, seems a decent solution, was the first custom cooler for the GTX780 so there are a lot of users with those. Personally i would still go with MSI out of them having thrown a lot of custom cooling cards for years.
 
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