I have to admit am surprised by most of the comments here. I have an i7 920 that I OC'ed to 4.1 that has been stable for a couple of years now and I cool it with a loop I made the hard way. Researched it a ton, ordered pump, reservoir, CPU block, tubing, rad, fans and put it all together. So I consider myself a competent OC'er and I am very pleased with the temps, results and I enjoyed the challenge as this was my first rig and loop.
When I built it I put in a GTX 295 which I also wanted to water cool but the idea of pulling apart the card, voiding the warranty, and paying $170+ for a water block just was not worth the effort after I paid $500+ for the card and it could run any game at 60fps already with no fan noise in my case. I just upgraded that 295 to two MSI Lightning gtx 580s in SLI so I could play BF3, MW3 WOW SWTOR etc in DX11 and on ultra settings. The MSI card had great reviews, a decent built-in OC with room for more and is very quiet using the twin frozer III fans included when used as a single card. As one other poster noted many MBs force you to put the two cards on top of each other with no slots in between to allow air to get in. I have a very high airflow case, Antec 1200 with 6 120mm fans (the case has a slot for a side fan to blow right on the graphics cards which I am using as well) and one 200mm on top. My MB is a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 which allows for triple SLI but only two out of three PCIe slots are 16x and they are next to each other, so you can not space out the cards for 2x SLI. When I set up the MSIs I immediately began to OC them since all the reviews said you could get 900 on the core clocks with ease and 950 to 1000 with some voltage increases. Also with the current games you can really see the benefits especially when you are using a 120 hertz monitors and or 3D which really pushes the limits of these cards. I could OC them easily but the temps started climbing like crazy when I did this for the top card. It routinely hit 90C playing WOW in 3d with any OC. This really shocked me, same for BF3 and SWTOR. I had to user define the fan speed protocol just to keep the system from thermal shutdown and even then the top card was pushing 88 to 93C with regular game play with all the case fans on max and the twin frozer fans screaming. In the end I had to not OC them at all to keep temp max at 88C on the top card.
I said all that as I am very pleased that PNY came out with what I thought everyone wanted which is a 580 with a high out of the box OC, self contained liquid cooled card that out performs every other stock 580 in speed, temps, fan noise, and has headroom for even higher OCs at a fantastic price.
I am returning the MSIs and going with two of these cards for those reasons. I am in no way trying to say anything bad about the MSIs except heat & noise can be an issue if you have to put them next to each other. Everything else about them I really liked.
And in response to some of the posts, every review of the card I read said it was quiet and I am sure it makes less noise that those twin frozers at full tilt, I have the ability to build my own loops but I have to ask why would anyone do that with these now available? As I see it I have a choice, I can pay a couple of hundred extra for a card with a built in waterblock and a lower stock overclock, I buy oc'ed cards take them apart throw away parts I paid for and put in an after market block for $150+ and the time and parts it takes to add them to the loop while voiding the warranty, or I can buy one of these for $30-$40 more than a stock card $0-$20 more than other OC'ed cards and have the highest out of the box OC on the market, great temps, and low noise.
Just my 2 cents
