ECS is generally viewed as a budget company and a graphics card that you’d expect to buy from ECS would be a stock reference design with a sticker on top saying ECS. Not so with their newly released 8800GT based graphics card the N8800GT-512MX DT. Not only does this new VGA card from ECS uses higher clock speeds but also a custom cooling in the form of Arctic Cooling’s Accelero S1Passive VGA heatsink.

ECS packs the N8800GT-512MX DT inside a very detailed box providing features and specifications on both sides of the packaging. The size of the packaging is around the same of a motherboard which is certainly more reserved than some of the over-the-top sizes we see from other tier 1 manufacturers.

Inside the box we found two 80mm fans attached to each other by a power cable. Both of those fans run using either a Molex connector or a motherboard fan header by removing the power converter from them. Also included is a DVI-SDUB converter, a PCI-E power converter cable, a video output cable, as well as a user manual and drivers CD.

The first thing you’ll noticed about the card is the massive heatsink that is attached to it. It’s the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Passive VGA heatsink and is taller than the height of the card its attached to. The Accelero S1 has four copper heatpipes to transfer heat from the graphics card to the Aluminum fins in the heatsink.

With a custom cooling solution in place, ECS also increased the clock speeds of the N8800GT-512MX DT to 650MHz on the core, 950MHz (1900MHz DDR) on the memory and 1620MHz on the shader. This will certainly help the ECS run faster than a stock 8800GT which is what we’ve compared it to along with a stock 8800GTX card.