My video card took a dump on me last week and I had to get a new one.
I ended up buying a Gigabyte GTX 560TI to replace the EVGA Geforce 9800 GT that had ram issues.
I opened up the box with the new card and my fiancee said, "hey, it's got headers." I thought it was pretty cool.

 

Ooooo. must be a high performance system. Are they open? Or do you have the PC equivalent of a flowmaster on there?

 

lol. that is a pretty sweet system. it looks like it would blow all my systems out of the water but then again all my systems were free and old.

 

Not as high performance as I would like but it gets the job done.

I believe the headers are a closed loop system much like zman EAI that he posted a while back (his exhaust was piped into the throttle body).

 

Those do look like the video card has headers. Those are actually heat pipes for the heat sink. Just a FYI. A 560 huh Are you gonna get her working hard?

 

The hard work will have to wait until I get the new motherboard/DDR3 ram and 6-core processor.
I played Crysis on high settings and it had a little lag so I set it back to medium. I believe it was the 2GB of ram instead of the 4 that is recommended with this card causing the lag. Then again, it could be the 2.2 ghz AMD Phenom 9550 processor.
I knew those were heat pipes too, my old processor heat sink had them.

 

I chose not to do the 6 core thing, got a faster clocked quad myself. Got her overclocked to just over 4.0 GHz. Phenom II 965.

8 GB of DDR3 RAM, NVIDIA 465 GTX. Crysis 2 on maxed out settings with almost no lag whatsoever. That six core/motherboard/ddr3 will do the same for you, I think.

BTW, the factory heatsink with a six core unit will have headers.

 

Gut the CAT and put a defouler on that board and you'll be suprised at the boost in performance

 

4 Ghz without any glitches? Hmm...

The only reason I don't have one of those monster cpu coolers on mine right now is because It's running stock. I read in a few places before I got this processor that the stock cooler is fine as long as it is running at stock speed but as soon as you overclock then you have to upgrade the cooler.

This is the processor I'm leaning toward http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...169&CatId=4432

 

Very nice choice of CPU. What PSU are you running?

Yup, I have stress tested it and it held to a max of 60 degrees C, 1.45v if IIRC. This is NOT with the factory cooler however, I have this massive beast...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=corsair%20a70
Beware, its very good for air cooling, but its HUGE. I have an Antec Nine Hundred Two case, and I can't mount a side panel fan because of the CPU cooler. It barely fits, and the Antec Nine Hundred series isn't exactly a small case.

Feeding are two 120mm front intake fans, one rear 120mm exhaust fan, and the top 200mm exhaust fan. Lots of air movement is key. I found that when my front intake fans have their filters clogged up (I don't clean them as often as I should), my temps will jump up to the Phenom's maximum recommended temps, and things start getting glitchy. Learned the hard way that I have to keep them clean.