Anyone tried the VF900's yet?

[samusaraniv]

Originally posted by: CaptainCraptacular

Originally posted by: nib95
I think I'll order two of these when my mate posts me my artic silver. because I'm not paying an extra £7 for some more!

Hey nib95, just something you may want to be aware of.

The Zalman vf700's perform extremely well when there's no card beside it to restrict the airflow to the fan. However, when used in an SLI configuration with a regular sized space between the 2 PCI-e slots (for instace the DFI SLI-DR non expert edition) the zalman will perform worse than the stock cooler.

For example: I have a DFI NF4 SLI-DR (the non-expert version) which has a smaller space between the 2 pci-e slots. I did have 2 7800GTX's, one with stock cooler and one with the zalman. When I put the zalman on the inside card, it performed terribly, much much worse than stock. When moved the zalman card to the outside with nothing restricting airflow to its fan, it worked great. Idle temps on the outside 78000GTx with the zalman was 38-42celcius and 55-59 load.

Since you have the expert edition you have a bit more space in between the 2 cards. Plus the vf900 is smaller than the vf700. So you may not have any problems at all. Just something to think about.

Myself, I'm wondering how the 900 will perform in SLI on the inside card. I now have 2 7900GTX's with stock cooling that I'd like to replace with the zalman assuming the 900s perform well on the inside board. If anyone knows of a review that covers this, I'm very interested.

I second your finding regarding poor SLI performance with 2 Zalman VF700s. I have an ABIT AN8 32X (w/ 2 PCI-E ports that have little space between them) and my 7800GTs ran hotter than they did with stock equipment due to poor airflow. I now have one VF700 on my 7900GT SE Step-up that I just received two days ago and the card runs at about 55C full load with the fan hooked up in silent mode. I did apply AS5 to the core and am uzing OCZ copper ramsinks on the mem modules. I use a Cooler Master Centurion with one exhaust 120mm fan -- I removed the 80mm intake because the screwholes were stripped and screws were not properly securing it to the case (it was rattling like mad). I am going to replace the 120mm fan with one with higher CFM:lower DB ratio and am going to get a quieter 80mm fan for the one that I removed. After I get my second Step-up card on Tuesday, I am going to apply my other VF700 and test the two in SLI configuration again (hoping for the best, but not expecting lower temps than the 7800GTs that I had).

EDIT: BTW, I have my card OC'ed to 588/870.