A Closer Look

The Akasa Vortexx Neo VGA Cooler is very similar in design to many of today's dual-slot coolers. It uses two heat pipes that are soldered to the GPU contact area and lead to its 32 cooling fins where the heat pipes are also soldered. The casing is made out of UV reactive plastic that will stand out prominently with the blue LED fan. The fan draws cool air in while exhausting the warm air out the back of the computer case. A good design feature of the cooler is it draws cool air in over the voltage area of the card keeping the hot power regulating chips cool. Unfortunately no vented expansion slot cover is included, so in order to vent the warm air outside a computer case, one would need to remove a shield or find one that is vented.


Turning the cooler over, it seems the design is a bit different than is advertised on the box. The box shows everything to be made of one piece of copper with raised portions for the RAM and GPU. In reality the mating surface for the GPU is copper, the RAM area is made of aluminum and is separate from the GPU surface. There is some good and bad to this as it's good that the two surfaces are separate which should lead to cooler temps, however aluminum isn't as good of a thermal conductor as copper. The raised areas for the VRAM are also missing, though this is done for compatibility reasons as not all video cards have the same VRAM layout. The surfaces themselves are evenly flat and have small machine markings but are smooth to the touch. Looking at the back of the fan we can see that it's rated for 12V @ 0.33A and should have no problems moving a lot of air.