Hello TechSpot Community,

I am stuck with a slow 9600GT, and am going to go for a huge computer upgrade after saving up some more. My i3 530 is going to be replaced with an i7 875k and the stock cooler may be replaced by watercooling if I have a spare few hundred bucks.

Now, I am a fan of single slot cooling. When I saw the EVGA HydroCopper GTX 470and 480, I was just like 'wow, how nice would one of those be!' But I will never buy an Nvidia card at the moment as they use power, overheat and are expensive, especially the water cooled ones. However, the new HD 6000 series, which I am hoping will smoke the GTX 480 (not literally - I am not buying a PCI-E Barbeque), are a more likely candidate for my new computer.

The problem is that the current flagship from ATi (soon to be AMD), the HD 5870, has the two DL-DVI's stacked on top of each other, so even if watercooled it will still take up two slots. The Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 does not have this problem, but I can't find any sources of single-slot faceplates. Are there any available, or do I have to get it cut in half myself?

Before anyone asks, I am not thinking of getting the more expensive Eyefinity Edition just for the sake of single slotness. I also want the extra monitor outputs for various projects, but it is not completely necessary. Should I buy the current Eyefinity HD 5870, or wait to see if the standard HD 6870 has the same problem, or buy the HD 6870 Eyefinity card? Of course I could go for a dual GPU, but I have survived with a 9600GT for long enough and will noot need that power. I try not to let my computer take over my life, but cannot live with it being this slow. If I buy a beast now, I shouldn't have to worry for at least three years.