Video card manufactures have started to go to great lengths to make their products stand out. For EVGA they provide a wide variety of NVidia based graphics cards and match that with their popular ACX cooling solution as a way to provide improve performance. The ACX cooler is comprised of three main parts. The dual fans provide improved cooling and make very little noise under normal operation. Below the fans you'll find a large multi-heatpipe cooler for the GPU. The third component is the standalone heatspreader for the VRM and memory. This is a key component as it also reinforces the PCB to prevent it from bending under load.

Together the ACX system works extremely well but suffers from ?Bare PCB Syndrome?. You see the ACX cooler is all positioned on one side of the video card leaving the back of the card exposed and ugly. Likewise if you happen to remove your ACX cooler, say to do overclocking with LN2, the only way to cool the VRM is to modify the heatspreader or make something yourself. In doing so you may invertedly break the one thing keeping the PCB from flexing.