eTeknix points out that the cooler of the EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX graphics card seems to be poorly designed. Photos from reviews from BitTech and TechPowerUp reveal that the cooling potential of the ACX doesn't hit the maximum of its potential as one of the three direct-touch heatpipes on the cooler barely makes any contact with the GPU die.
As Redditors point out, the ACX cooler on last year's EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC had pretty much the same design with just two of the three direct-touch heatpipes actually touching the GPU.
This may explain why EVGA's ACX cooler performs so poorly in reviews versus other custom cooling solutions.
ASUS on the other hand nailed it with its ASUS STRIX GTX 970:
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX heatpipes are misaligned
Posted on Monday, September 22 2014 @ 13:47 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck