I am not a fan of 3rd party boards or coolers on a GPU because I like the potential to put a water block on my card if I ever get the money. Not only that, but I am also not a fan of cards that sag such as this one and the DirectCU2 580. And I also like cards that blow the hot air out of my case.
All that aside, the cooler performs fantastic. I think the point is slightly missed since you can't run all the fans up to 100%, but really you don't need it. Even at full you can hardly hear the fans going and my Sythe fans are louder. This card also cools better than the DirectCU2 580 I had which is saying something because this one is also lighter. Funny thing to also mention here not cooler related is the Asus 580 required dual 8 pins, this one only requires 1 and can overclock higher. Going to say probably because of the extra cooling capacity.
The potential is great if you don't mind huge triple slot monsters that don't blow the air out of the back of your case. I think if you need cooling this great you should just go water considering this cooler is almost the price of a decent block.
Another thing to note is, if I had a choice I would have got an eVGA 580 with a reference cooler instead but I had no choice so I'm happy with this.