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Graphic Card Cooler Roundup

Cooling/VGA & Other Cooling by richbastard @ 2004-03-08

With modern graphic cards producing as much heat as a modest desktop processor, 3rd party graphic card coolers have changed from being an exotic piece of aluminium owned by geeks to a necessity for silent/cool computing. We tested 7 popular VGA coolers to see which one would suit your needs best, whether you are searching for silence or extra performance.

Intro

The times of graphic cards being cooled with a heatsink & fan not larger than the gpu itself are sadly over. Modern graphic cards like the Radeon 9800 (Pro/XT) or GF FX59x0 (Ultra) consume as much energy as low end processors. While speed freaks are thrilled with the rapid evolution in the graphic card industry, people who adore silence have no choice but to buy a - nearly obsolete - passive cooled GF4 MX or Radeon 9200.

Luckily for us PC enthusiasts who want a silent yet performant gaming system there is another option. Zalman was the pioneer of passive graphic card cooling solutions, and the popular big yellow Zalman 80A-HP is well known by most tweakers. Recently other manufacturers introduced silent graphic card cooler solutions, like Arctic Cooling and ThermalTake.

Not everybody cares about silence. Others aim for better cooling to reach higher clock speeds. To satisfy both we tested a range of popular VGA card coolers, aiming for silence and/or performance.

Cooler	Purpose	Manufacturer	suitable vga cards
80A-HP	silence	Zalman	ANY
80C-HP+FAN	silence & performance	Zalman	ANY
Vga Silencer	silence & performance	Arctic Cooling	R9x00
TTC-CUV2AB	performance	Titan	ANY
VC-RE	performance	Evercool	R9x00&GF2/3/4MX
Giant II	silence	ThermalTake	ANY*

*: fits all graphic cards, but not motherboards

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