Direct cooling for 20% cooler than reference.

If the GPU is the heart of a graphics card, then the cooling device would be its lungs. Without it, the graphics card would not be able to "breath" smoothly, causing it to break down or even cause the entire system to fail. For ultimate cooling, ASUS DirectCU thermal technology developed the ideal heat banishing copper in exclusively designed heat pipes for direct and fast heat dissipation.

ASUS DirectCU technology

Thick copper heatpipes are accurately positioned in direct contact with the GPU surface so heat is transported and dissipated efficiently to the heatsink - achieving a 20% cooler performance than reference. Since heat is carried away faster, fans can spin at a lower speed thus resulting in quieter performance than reference.

Other brands

An extra metal plate is placed between the heatpipes and GPU, slowing down heat transfer to the heatsink. Due to temperature build-up, the fan has to spin faster, leading to louder operating noise.

Graphics Engine: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
Bus Standard: PCI Express 2.0
Video Memory: GDDR5 1GB
Engine Clock: 910 MHz
CUDA Core: 192
Shader Clock: 1800 MHz
Memory Clock: 4104 MHz ( 1026 MHz GDDR5 )
Memory Interface: 192-bit
Resolution: D-Sub Max Resolution: 2048x1536
DVI Max Resolution: 2560x1600
Interface: D-Sub Output: Yes x 1
DVI Output: Yes x 1
HDMI Output: Yes x 1
HDCP Support: Yes
Accessories: 1 x Power cable
Software: ASUS Driver & Utilities