Zalman 80A-HP:
This well-known cooler was certainly a pioneer in graphic card cooling. The innovative design uses a heat pipe to conduct heat to the backside of the graphic card, effectively doubling the cooling space of a single sided passive cooler. When this completely passive solution was released, it was suited to cool virtually any graphic card (given it had mounting holes) without making any noise, or the risk of fan failure. Unfortunately, even a heatsink twice the size of your video card isn't good enough to keep high end GPU's below acceptable temperature nowadays. Good case cooling is a must if you think of using this to cool your Radeon 9800Pro/XT / FX 59x0.


Package:


Two large heatsinks, a heatpipe, some thermal paste and a handy screwdriver for those who don't have any tools lying around.


Installation:





While the design allows it to be installed on virtually any graphic card with mounting holes (almost any Nvidia GeForce/FX or Radeon 9x00 card), the flexibility involves lots of screws and parts. Not only do you have to apply thermal paste on the gpu, but also on the two places touching the heat pipe (luckily thermal paste is included). This makes it a messy and time-consuming task to disassemble the entire cooler. Most people install it once and never take it off again.


Base finish :



The finish of the base is average. It's not shiny, but it's pretty flat. Lapping the heatsink might improve cooling.