Maximum PC

I have two MSI 560Ti cards with the TwinFrozr HSF. One fan has stopped working on each card. I have been searching high and low, but can't find a compatible aftermarket cooler to replace them. XigmaTek VD1065 is supposed to fit, according to their website. I ordered two of them, but they won't mount. Now I'm stuck with two useless HSF in addtion to two useless cards.

Does MSI not use "standard" mounting for the GPU on their cards, or did I get hosed on the XigmaTek?

Why not send the cards back to MSi if they have warranty still?

And also, there's two versions of the gpu cooler made by xigmatek. The Bifrost and the Bifrost II. The original bifrost (which I'm assuming is what you bought and not listed on their website anymore) will not work with newer nvidia cards. Your 560 uses the odd 51mm (technically 50.9) x 61mm mounting holes. Most older cards used 43x43, 51x51, or 53x53, of which the older bifrost could mount to.

I'd contact Xigma and see if you could just get a new mounting hardware since it looks like both products are the same.

You might be on to something, there. The one I got has 3 threaded holes in each mounting area, while the one pictured on XigmaTek's site has 6.

I lost a little respect for that company. Why reuse that VD1065 designation and not give any kind of indication that there are two versions of it? There is only the one shown on their website.

Looking at the difference in the heat sink blocks and comparing to my cards, it doesn't look like just a mounting kit will work, but I'll give them a chance to help me.

I too think it wasn't a wise choice to reuse the destination, specially from a customer service standpoint.

I'm going out on a limb and say it was a marketing choice (a stupid one at that) so they could reuse almost the same name to keep the same brand/product recognition without too much promotional investment or marketing collateral changes.

Sometimes, companies do this if they have a lot of marketing collateral left over from the older model (my old job, we did this; we just added a "+"... lol), but the newer model is only slightly different. It's easier and cheaper to slap a sticker on a box, manual and quick start guides that has the number II than to dump it and redo all the manuals, boxes, and such; plus the associated costs of the reprints, translations, and internal quality control for the new marketing collateral pieces.

Those boxes are nice printed boxes and they aren't cheap, specially if they are high gloss using custom PANTONE inks with any other custom overlays, cut outs or plastic windows.

I had considered the warranty approach with MSI, as well. Honestly, though, the "coincidence" of two of them failing at about the same interval (almost right at a year of use) doesn't give me a lot of confidence in putting the same fans back on it. I've had various cards of different manufacture over the years, and this is the first one that this has happened on. I have ran some of those other cards for over 5 years.

I'm also confused by MSI's warranty statement:

Additionally, I've already removed the coolers which will probably excuse them from honoring any warranty.

You should have a 2/3 year warranty on your cards, just put the fans back on and send it in. They'll still have to take them off.

I think I'll give XigmaTek a chance to follow up on this "updating" of their product, first. I've already sent them a request.

Sometime between ordering and receiving, Newegg "deactivated" this cooler. It's really looking like I got caught in the crossfire of the update.

who knows... they may have been sitting on those two coolers, waiting for a sucker... their system goes "yes! finally offloaded them two bastards! Deactivate time!" lol

UPDATE: I found an adapter that Prolimatech makes for one of it's coolers. $5

I've ordered one to see if it fits. It should, It looks to be a simple bracket to expand one dimension of the 51mm out to the longer dimension. If it does, I'll get another one.

I would never buy anything from MSI most of their stuff is junk. It reviews well because they cherry pick the review cards most of the time. The actual products you get have questionable reliability. EVGA, XFX, Sapphire, Gigabyte, and Asus are the only GPU makers I seriously consider. Zotac is a maybe, I haven't heard anything bad about that.

I run a few MSi products. I got 3 570's that I like, plus some of my older C2D mobo's are MSi that have been working for years. They aren't bad, but yeah, sometimes their quality isn't as good as EVGA or a few others. I only went with them because they were cheap; firesale of their stock 570's for 250 a pop.

Also, XFX does make some bad products, but they are mostly good. I've had XFX gpu's go bad on me because they used bad caps (actually was industry wide issue; XFX, PNY, BFG and Nvidia reference boards had them. Some had fake Rubicon "solid" caps; knock off Rubycon. Or used shitty Sacon caps).

And EVGA isn't exactly perfect either with some cards having bad soldering/micro fracturing issues (some other manufacturers suffer from same thing), but at least their warranty is the best. Although, it can be fixed using the oven trick.