My video card: a beast, refined.

[sho.gun]

I bought the Zalman ZM-80AHP VGA cooler a couple of days ago and today I set out to install the sucker. To those of you thinking of buying one of these, be wary that these things weigh 400g and if you move your case a lot then maybe you shouldn't get this thing. I'm planning on making some kind of support bracket that will help stabilize it.

I had to use my trusty dremel to chop up the long heatsinks into smaller pieces that will fit on the vid card, they seem to be doing their job as they get quite warm to the touch.

I'm actually surprised at how well this whole heat pipe thing work, the back portion of this massive heatsink is not touching the video card at all and yet it is VERY warm because of the heat transferred by the pipe, in fact it's almost as warm as the front side, which is in direct contact with the GPU core.

Well here's my Radeon 9700pro in all it's glory:

http://www.lemonizer.com/images/comp/PICT0399.JPG

http://www.lemonizer.com/images/comp/PICT0400.JPG

http://www.lemonizer.com/images/comp/PICT0402.JPG

http://www.lemonizer.com/images/comp/PICT0407.JPG

http://www.lemonizer.com/images/comp/PICT0409.JPG

http://www.lemonizer.com/images/comp/PICT0408.JPG


Pretty beastly eh?

[Cantacuzene]

How far are you going to push the clocks on that beast? That cooler is no joke. YOu should be able to approach or pass 400 core with that.

[revil]

Originally posted by Cantacuzene
How far are you going to push the clocks on that beast? That cooler is no joke. YOu should be able to approach or pass 400 core with that.
I dunno about that. it is a passive cooler afterall.

[Cantacuzene]

I dunno for someone who games OCing the video card has more effect than OCing the cpu. I agree though that there isnt anything on the market the 9700pro cant handle so there is no need to OC it for preformance. But my lowly 4200 needs the extra juice, so I give it to it.

[hang10wannabe]

hey thats my leadtek 4200 in the first and second pics!!!! :rolleyes: :love:

[CynJon]

Sho.gun, let us know how the cooler performs once you have a chance to play with it awhile...I've been thinking about going with the Zalman also for my 9700, mainly to decrease the noise. I'm not overclocking mine, either, since I'm pretty CPU limited from what I can tell. I got some huge overclocks with my card, but 3DMark scores and UT2K3 framerates didn't increase at all...

[sho.gun]

Despite it's menacing looks, I don't think this cooler performs at the same level a solid vid card cooler considering that it is utilizing passive cooling. There's no way this think can keep up with the ones equipped with fans. The reason I got this was that whenever I play starcraft the computer would just exits back to the desktop midgame and I thought that my vid card was overheating. Well, replaced the heatsink and the game still crashes back to the desktop.

The area near the video card gets very warm so proper air circulation is needed. I haven't tried OC'ing the card yet but I ran 3dmark 2001 today and got 12500 some 3dmarks, which is pretty low for a 9700pro. I'm not sure what's bottlenecking it.

CPU XP 1800+ @ 1.63 Mhz
512mb pc3200 Corsair XMS
MSI kt 333 mobo

I'm going to buy one of those centrifugal slot fan blowers to blow some air directly at this thing, which really defeats the purpose of a silent cooler but oh well.

[sho.gun]

Btw Chosen, I got mine over at www.svc.com for $24.99

[Joshua]

That thing looks like it's taking up about 20 pci slots! :)

All that shinyness and not too much cooling?? Shame..