Thermalright HR-03 Plus VGA Heatsink Review

Cooling/VGA & Other Cooling by geoffrey @ 2007-04-24

The NVIDIA Geforce 8800 VGA cards are available for some time now, but the amount of aftermarket heatsinks is still rather scarce for those power beasts. Now Thermalright steps forward with their HR-03 Plus, capable of cooling the G80 passively? Read on to learn more.

  • next

Introduction

With today's hardware using more and more power we see that heat is forming serious issues for your pc hardware components. Aftermarket cooling companies like Thermalright come to the rescue and today we take a look at their latest heatsink designed for Geforce 8800 VGA cards.

Introduction

Madshrimps (c)


Thermalright has build up quite a reputation from back in the Atlon XP times, offering truly the best heatsink one could get at the time. Since then they've grown bigger and better by creating new heatsinks for every available market. Back in 2006 we already saw what the HR-03 is worth for Geforce 7 series VGA cards, to accommodate the increased heat output of the 8 series the engineers went back to their drawing table and came up with the 'Plus'-edition.

Madshrimps (c)


Features

  • A maximum of 6 heatpipes for maximum amount of heat transfer to work with any of 92mm or smaller fans for best configuration to suit your needs
  • Proprietary two-heatsinks-soldered-to-form-as-one design to maximize cooling capacity
  • 6 heatpipes soldered immensely close to heatsink fins to increase heat transfer efficiency
  • Two ways of mounting the cooler on video card for best space and configuration management in ATX and BTX form factor cases
  • Light weight and easy no-tool installation
  • SLI/Crossfire compatible for serious gaming enthusiasts
  • Cosmetically contoured design for that vanity look

    Technical Specs

  • Dimension:
    L133 x W156 x H38 mm (heatsink only)

  • Weight:
    410g (heatsink only)

  • VGA Card Compatibilities
    - Compatible with Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX video cards only.
    - For 8800 GTS card, a separate HSI heatsink is required (available by mid March, free to existing HR-03 Plus owners.)

    Let's have a look at what Thermalright has to offer us ->
    • next
    Comment from jodiuh @ 2007/04/24
    Printing now! Please never, ever take that feature away.

    I've had this sink sitting on my desk for almost a month now and just can't decide if it's worth it. It'd be paired w/ a Scythe SFLEX E 1200RPM 120mm fan.

    I used the original HR-03 on the X1900 because it's OEM cooler sounded like a jet engine, but this 8800GTX cooler never gets loud. Tho it does get up to 80ish C when gaming...

    EDIT: Just finished reading...still not convinced this is the cooler for me...oh well.
    Comment from jmke @ 2007/04/24
    print feature won't leave site soon
    the original HR-03 features less heat pipes, so might end up less effective than the stock cooling

     

    reply