ECS N9600GT-512MX-P

Normally when you see the name ECS, the first thing you think of is motherboards. The ECS brand is practically synonymous with motherboards here in the US, where their value-priced AMD and Intel-based motherboards are quite popular among thrifty shoppers looking for inexpensive upgrades. But margins on motherboards are razor thin, particularly in the value motherboard space ECS dominates.

Because of this, ECS competes in other markets besides just motherboards. They also manufacture notebooks, and more recently they’ve made large strides in the video card space.

And ECS’ video cards are quite compelling. Rather than rely on NVIDIA’s stock cooling unit, ECS has partnered with the cooling pros at Arctic Cooling to integrate higher-performing aftermarket units for even better cooling than the stock GeForce cooler provides. The ECS N9600GT-512MX-P is one such card and we were quite impressed with it.


The most distinguishing feature found on the ECS N9600GT-512MX-P is without a doubt its cooling, which is provided by Arctic Cooling’s Accelero S2.

In case you didn’t know, the Accelero S2 is one of the best aftermarket cooling units on the market right now. A few years ago we ran a comparison of the various VGA coolers on the market and found that the Accelero delivered better performance than cooling units from Zalman and Thermaltake.



If you were to buy this cooler yourself and add it to your own GeForce 9600 GT card, the cooler itself would set you back about $20 at an online retailer such as Newegg, and then, depending on who manufactures your card, you may even risk voiding your card’s warranty.

So how does the Accelero S2 work? At the heart of the Accelero S2 are two 6.5mm thick copper heatpipes. The heatpipes are used to actively cool the GPU, and then run across the top of the entire graphics card. The heatpipes are nearly 9” in length, in fact, the heatpipes are so long, they extend beyond the top of the graphics card.

Once the heatpipes have pulled the heat off the GPU, the heat is then transferred to the air via a massive aluminum heatsink which consists of 30 fins. The heatsink is so large it will swallow the slot next to your graphics card, so you’ll have to keep it empty in order for the card to fit within your PC’s chassis.


The cooler is completely fanless, so it generates no noise whatsoever. This makes the card ideal for users looking to build a silent-running PC. ECS then finishes the package off with 8 aluminum RAMsinks so that each individual memory module is passively cooled.

With its Accelero cooling, ECS’ N9600GT-512MX-P card is basically just begging to be overclocked. Fortunately ECS does just that, running the graphics core at 680MHz while the stream processors are clocked at 1728MHz. The board’s memory is then OC’ed to 925MHz. These speeds aren’t quite as high as some of the other manufacturers in this roundup, but that can easily be rectified if you want a little more performance. The card also ships with a DVI adapter, a component video cable, HDMI adapter, power cable, and the audio pass through cable.