In the Box

For more than a year now Club 3D is shipping their cards in compact box, only slightly larger than the card inside; no overly crowded front either, only useful information for the end user to see what’s inside. The back is more traditional, listing all the NVIDIA features and showing a photo of the video card.



Inside you’ll find the bare essentials, a driver CD, a DVI->VGA converter, a quick installation guide and short HDTV Video Out cable.



The Club 3D 8600 GT PCB is custom design, differing from the ones we’ve seen in the past from Sparkle, Calibre and Galaxy. The heatsink is larger than the PCB and makes this card a dual slot product.



Here you can clearly see the heatsink surpassing the length of the video card, do note though that the custom PCB design is shorter than the NVIDIA reference one. Also note the lack of memory chips on the back, the 512Mb is all on the front side.



The heat is removed from the GPU by 2 heat pipes which dissipate it through the large collection of aluminum fins. The heatsink resembles the Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 quite a bit, a custom design job from AC for Club 3D so a we've been told. The latest revision of the card removes any doubt as you see in the photo here.



Club 3D added on D-Sub VGA connector, DVI connector and TV-Out to the rear of the card, giving you the option on how to connect the 8600 GT to your display of preference.



Onto the testing ->