Installation:
You'll want to note that installation will be different for every card the Musashi is used on. Every series of graphics chipset uses a slightly different PCB layout and even some same-series cards from different manufacturers will use slightly different layouts. To make sure everything is covered, Scythe gives you more than enough heatsinks to cover every vital component. I was pleasantly surprised that my current card did not even have any heatsinks on the memory chips so it was an upgrade already! Installation instructions are included with the cooler and cover most of the common layouts, such as, what heatsinks to use and where and how to install the cooler itself onto the card. Remember that video cards are highly sensitive to shock, especially when you're handling them a lot. You must also be careful when removing your old cooler because a lot of them are held on not only with screws or retention brackets but also with a thermal adhesive. Since you'll be handling the card and also prying off the old components, I'm going to say that this is not an installation for a novice user to attempt. If you aren't fully comfortable with doing this then have a friend or computer shop do it because some video cards are simply too expensive to risk damaging!

The card I will be using for testing the Musashi is the Asus EN8800GT TOP 1gb model. I'll also note that instead of using the included thermal grease I have opted to use higher performing Tuniq TX-2.

 
(Click above to enlarge)

Installation for me was fairly straightforward and about a fifteen minute process from start to finish. First, I removed my old cooler and carefully cleaned off all the excess thermal adhesive paste that was left on the GPU chip. Not cleaning the GPU properly would interfere with the Musashi having maximum contact with the chip to remove the heat. After that, I stuck one of the memory heatsinks on all 8 of the card's memory chips. I was slightly concerned about the eight chips on the back that had to be covered because I did not get enough thin heatsinks with the Musashi to go on these. Since the very large Asus heatsink on these chips had to be removed, I was left with no option but to put the slightly larger memory heatsinks here. I'm still a little unsure on how well they're sticking though because these chips seemed slightly glossy on top and the heatsinks really didn't adhere to my liking, but they are still attached and I haven't had any problems so it must be fine. Lastly, it was time to bolt the large Musashi heatsink onto the card. While inserting this new cooler and my video card into my case it was an incredibly tight squeeze that really brought out design limitations of both my case and motherboard. It was easy enough to maneuver into the case differently, but when I saw that it completely covered all my SATA ports on the motherboard I had to replace one cable with a right-angle connector and move another one down to a different port to give me ample clearance.

(Below: press image of installed cooler: better view than I could get)

Testing:
I'll be testing the Musashi the same way as I would a CPU cooler. Using the video card's internal temperature sensor I will measure both idle and load temperatures from the stock cooler and from the upgraded cooler. Temperature results will then be listed and discussed below.

Stock Cooler
Idle: 51 Celsius
Load: 62 Celsius

Musashi
Idle: 41.8 Celsius
Load: 55.39 Celsius

As you can see right away, the Musashi did show us some noticable temperature drops. Idle temperatures showed a nearly 10 degree drop with the Musashi installed versus the stock cooler. Load temperatures were just a bit under a full 7 degree drop. As I don't have the expensive tools to measure exact decibel ratings, I'll give you real-world noise observations. The Musashi was significantly quieter and more pleasing to the ear at full temperature versus the stock cooler on my card. I found that for a good noise to performance ratio I could turn both fans down to about 2/3 the power and still retain solid cooling results while not making it stand out in my silently cooled case.