Back in 1923, mountaineer George Mallory was interviewed by the New York Times about his planned climb of the yet-unconquered Mount Everest. When Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb the mountain, he answered: "because it's there."

Yes, the new Radeon HD 5870 is a blazing-fast graphics card--the fastest single-GPU card in the world, in fact. So why would anyone in their right mind want to void their warranty in a wanton quest to squeeze out more megahertz from the beast? George knew the answer, and if you're reading this, we suspect you'll agree. Caution be damned, we want to know how far we can push the Cypress graphics processor.

We aren't going to settle for a small increase, either. We want to know just how far a reasonable human being can take the Radeon HD 5870, so standard air-cooling solutions aren't going to cut it. Nope, we're going to need something a little more effective. When you want to kick PC cooling up a notch, liquid cooling is the way to go. For more on the Radeon HD 5870 itself, check out our launch coverage right here.

It is only natural that we look to PowerColor's new Radeon HD 5870 LCS as the weapon of choice in our charge to slay the megahertz (or could it be gigahertz?) dragon. Equipped with a pre-installed EK water block, the card is factory overclocked and advertised to keep temperatures under 50 degrees Celsius at load. Let's start our overclocking journey by taking a closer look at the card.