Inside the system

The heatsink itself is quite compact



However adding the crossflow fan does reduce space inside the case a lot



I doubt if you can use SLI



As mentioned on the previous page, the mounting bracket supports normal fans too, I decided to try the VF1 with a 92mm fan from Arctic Cooling (this one) and a silent 120mm fan, the GlobalWin 1202512L.



The fan is mounted onto the bracket using push-pins and this makes installation very easy, with a 120mm model the target area is only covered by a small part of the fan, while the rest blows air down onto the mainboard and CPU area. With a 92mm fan the airflow is more focused:



The last setup is a custom mount of the 92mm fan straight onto the heatsink, doing so it also removes any doubt if you can use this particular configuration in SLI:



Test Results

Now the interesting part, the performance numbers:



With the crossflow fan at High speed the thermal performance is awesome; no other word can describe it. However the noise generation is quite high and not very tolerable. Reducing the fan speed to medium setting only decreases performance and noise a bit. The “low” setting takes the performance/noise lead; it’s on par performance wise to the “ghetto” mod with the 92mm fan running at 7v but produces less noise according to the dBA meter.

The other fan setups with 92/120mm fans mounted using the included bracket return quite poor temperature results and that at noise levels sometimes higher than the crossflow fan. Those configurations did not allow the VF1 to remain cool enough when overclocked.



At a higher heat output the custom mounted 92mm fan setup offers a better performance/noise ratio than the Crossflow at High / Medium, however the best balance is still the VF1 Plus @ Low, which proved to be cooler than stock cooling while remaining almost dead silent.


Overall Impression

With a competitive price of ~€35 this VF1 Plus cooler from Sytrin delivers quite a price/performance/noise punch to the competition. The build quality is excellent and the mounting system, although a bit more cumbersome with many smaller parts to install, allows the unit to fit most video cards on the market.

The included crossflow fan generates quite a racket at 12v, even causing the case to vibrate, but it delivers extreme performance at this setting. Luckily performance remains impressive when choosing the “low” setting on the included fan controller, which makes the fan dead silent.

The extra fan mounting options, while interesting, did not prove to offer a better performance/noise ratio than the included crossflow fan. Only mounting a 92mm fan directly onto the heatsink (which is not officially supported) keeps the cooling on par.

The only downside to the VF1 Plus is the rather large size of the fan mounting bracket and crossflow fan combo, this construction will effectively prevent you from putting a second VGA card for SLI on some motherboards.