| Zalman VF700-Cu LED VGA Cooler | |||
|
Product: Zalman VF700-Cu LED VGA cooler
Introduction: The graphics in computer games are constantly evolving. As a result more powerful video cards are required and not everyone is able to afford to purchase a new video card on a regular basis. One option to help increase the life of your current video card is to overclock it. However, the stock cooling on a lot of video cards is not effective enough to properly cool an overclocked video card. This is where the Zalman VF700-Cu LED VGA cooler comes in. Zalman claims that the VF700 is able to drop the temperature of your GPU by up to ten degrees Celsius.
Specifications:
Features:
Contents:
Test Bed:
* Since my video card does not have a temperature probe built in, I placed a thermal probe on the video card, so the tip of it was touching the video card. The probe has been sitting on the video card for a few months prior to this review.
The VF700-Cu LED VGA cooler: One of the nicest things about the VF700-Cu is that it is made entirely out of copper. I have long been a fan of copper heat sinks as they are better at conducting heat. This in turn means cooler temperatures. While copper heat sinks generally are heavier, Zalman tackled this issue without any problems , as I will examine in the next section. As the name of this VGA cooler implies, the VF700-Cu LED includes a blue LED that illuminates the whole fan. This defiantly adds a nice touch to the product. The only downside is that the VF700 only has the option to have a blue LED and according the Zalman there are no plans to have the option of other coolers.
Installation: Installation of the VF700 was fairly easy. All I had to do to remove the old heat sink off of my video card was remove two plastic pins and unplug the fan. I then took a lint free rag along with some isopropyl alcohol and cleaned the thermal paste off of the GPU. I then applied the ram sinks to the video ram. Zalman included 8 RAM sinks which was enough for me to apply one sink to the memory chips on both the top and the bottom of my video card. Before installing the VF700, I had to attach the mounting hardware. At first I was a little concerned about the design of the back bracket, which is meant to help support the weight of the massive heat sink. On the back of the video card, there is a metal bracket that helps support the weigh of the massive VF700. I was afraid that the bracket actually rested on the video card itself. However, I soon realized that Zalman had designed the bracket to sit on metal spacers with rubber washers at the end touching the video card. I then applied the included thermal paste and attached the VF700 to my video card. To attach the cooler itself, all I had to do was line up the screw holes and insert a few screws.
Performance: When I first saw the VF700-Cu, I knew that I was going to notice a pretty significant temperature drop as the cooling on my video card was lacking. The stock heat sink was simply a 40 mm fan attached to a piece of aluminum. The average idle temperature was around 49 degrees Celsius and the load temperature was around 60 degrees Celsius. Probably the only reason the video card didn’t overheat was because my room is normally around 60 – 65 degrees F. After I had installed the VF700-Cu LED, the idle temperatures dropped to 40 degrees Celsius, while my load temperatures dropped to 48 degrees Celsius. This is a pretty considerable drop in temperatures. I could have probably gotten the GPU temperature if I had used Arctic Silver 5 instead of the included thermal paste. One thing I found disappointing about this review was that even with the drop in temperatures, I was still unable to overclock my video card. Anything over a 2 MHz overclock on the memory, or a 4 MHz overclock on the GPU, would cause instability and artifacts to appear on the screen. This however, is probably not the fault of the VF700. It is more likely that the video card is to blame.
Conclusion: The VF700-Cu LED VGA cooler is both aesthetically pleasing and remarkably functional. With the help of this VGA cooler, I was able to drop between nine and twelve degrees Celsius off my GPU temperatures. This is a fairly considerable drop and would defiantly make a difference when attempting to overclock your video card. While the VF700-Cu LED only comes with the option of a blue LED and is a little pricy, this is a small price to pay for the potential performance gain this VGA cooler offers. The VF700-Cu LED deserves a solid five out of five.
Pros: + Able to effectively cool a video card Cons: - Price |
|||
