What's new, pussycat?
Launched just before CeBIT this year, the FreezerX2 is very much a custom-designed GeForce GTX 260.
The card-wide cooler uses a couple of 80mm orange-coloured fans that are either cool or just obnoxious, depending upon your aesthetic tastes. They're both PWM-controlled, meaning that the speeds modulate with respect to temperature. Inno3D reckons that the cooler outperforms the reference heatsink by over 10°C when the GPU's under full load.
Three chunky heatpipes make contact with the GTX 260 GPU, hence Inno3D marketing them as direct heatpipe touch (DHT). Being a recent model, the underlying GPU is based on the 55nm manufacturing process, and total card power is reckoned to be 175W: a few watts below reference.
Frequencies are the same as any reference GTX 260, that is, 576MHz core, 1,242MHz memory, and 1,998MHz RAM. We're adamant that the model should have been sold on a pre-overclocked basis, but it's not something that's difficult to do by yourself.
Importantly, the cooler is practically silent when running in 2D and very quiet in full-blown 3D mode.
The PCB is also slightly different from reference, making it cheaper for Inno3D to produce. You sill have the option of connecting up to two further cards for three-way SLI, of course.
Huge as the HSF may be, it doesn't concurrently cool the 896MB of memory chips, all contained on the topside. That job is left to a separate U-shaped heatisink. A further two heatsinks are found on the hot-running components on either side, as well.
Indeed, it's a little taller than the regular double-height cooler. No problem in larger chassis, but may cause an issue in a small form-factor box.
I just can't get used to the orange-coloured fins.
The wow in this package, we suppose, comes in the form of pricing. Looking around at various etailers, the cheapest (reference, 216-core) GeForce GTX 260s weigh in at £150 or so. This custom-designed model is currently available at Ebuyer.com for £138.
Bundling-wise, the package should be identical to the Inno3D OC version, as shown here.
