Now 6 Zalman VF900 Video Card Cooler Reviews......

[Canterwood]

Just got a VF900 for my 7900GT.

Very impressed, set it on the lowest fan level so its silent and its still cooler than stock heatsink.

A good investment imo.

 

[althes]

will get mine this week and check back in

 

[Ackmed]

Why oh why cant someone make a good cooler that exhaust the air out of the case? Sigh. Im very tempted to go back to watercooling just for that reason.

 

[the Chase]

I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that about the only way to really cool an overclocked and especially an overvolted 1900 card is to go watercooling. And the stock heatsink is actually pretty darn good if you can deal with the noise of running the fan faster than stock settings.

Canterwood- what load temps are you getting with the VF900?? Compared to stock??

 

[Remedy]

Originally posted by: munky
I seriously doubt the NV5 has the cooling capacity for x1900xt(x) duty. It has no heatpipes, and an aluminum heatsink that looks smaller than the stock cooler. It'll be quiet for sure, but the Accelero has a heatpipe cooler that's like 2x as big as the NV5, and even that one seems to give mixed results in temps.

You can question him yourself.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Review from a X1900XTX owner - http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=452425

Looks like it's stick with the stock cooler or water cooling for me.

 

[the Chase]

WOW!! Those are awesome results for the VF900! I'm ordering one as soon as I can find one for under $50 shipped.
25 degrees C better than the VF700 is a feat. If you have a 1900 series you may want to stick with the OEM or go water but he had to run the OEM at 100% for those temps. I have the 1800XT so I think the 900 will be just enough for me.

Thanks for posting this Capt Caveman!

 

[Munky]

110C with a zalman vf700 is just crazy. Either his ambient temps were equivalent to those in a desert, or something else was wrong. A 25C improvent from the vf700 to vf900 would bring my temps down to 64C, but I'd be happy with anything under 80C. Otherwise, I might have to buy the accelero and try that one out.

 

[nib95]

I'm ordering two of these along with my new PSU.
I have a conductive pen, AC5 and all relevant items to make my GPU's voltmodded beasts with VF900's.

 

[the Chase]

I was pondering that 110C temp also. He seems like he knows what he's doing but never have seen temps that high for any card! Here's some more info to chew on- it's for the X1800XT though so may not relate as well to the 1900's. http://translate.google.com/translate?h...r%3D%26rls%3DGGLG,GGLG:2006-10,GGLG:en

Sounds like a plan nib 95!! Throw us a line on what your results are! (esp. the VF900 temps on those overvolted 7900's).

 

[exitous]

If anyone is interested in an alternative, I have a Sytrin VF1 on my X1900XT now. After installing it my card idles at 38c and gets around 68-69c under load with the fan set on low. I did some temp logging with ATI Tool for comparison and the stock fan would go from idling at 56c up to 86c in about 4 minutes and never really get any higher. With the Sytrin after 35 minutes of running rthdribl fullscreen at 1280x1024, 69c was as high as it ever got. For a direct comparison 4 minutes in it was at 62c with the Sytrin.

The Sytrin does have some downsides though.. the screws mine came with seem to be the wrong size for an X1900XT. They have a rounded top on them that keeps the heatsink from making proper contact (at least with my Sapphire card). I found some screws laying around here with a flat head on them though so that was no big deal for me, but its something to keep in mind. The instructions are also wrong, you have to use the Nvidia clips since the ATI ones won't line up with the mounting holes properly. That is kind of obvious though without needing instructions by just looking at it. Also another minor annoyance is putting the crossflow fan holder on since it shares the screws with the videocard where it mounts to the case. It probably goes on easier with single slot videocards since it wouldn't have to share a screwhole then.

 

[Golgatha]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118001

Newegg gots them too!

 

[MDykas]

I just installed the Sytrin VF1...................All I have to say is this thing kicks some hot Butt. Greatly reduces the overall temps. Beats the pants off the Accelero X2 !

 

[Woodchuck2000]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
I just don't get how companies continue to sell inferior products at premium prices just because the competition is lacking in certain sectors.

Nvidia is selling 7800GS 16 pipeline cards in AGP market for $300 and yet it sells 7900GT 24 pipeline cards for $300 in PCIe. Zalman sells a far superior to this puny 185gram cooler on the PC market in the form of CNPS7000 for $30. $50 isn't a lot of $ in the world of $500 videocards but it's the principle that counts. I guess there are always consumers who just dont care, probably same ones that paid $10,000 premium for Mercedes CLK over C class sedan...without knowing that it costs Mercedes less $ to make CLK than the latter model. I guess in today's society emotions rule the purchase decision and logic is out the window.

The word you're looking for is volume.

The volume of sales of high-end AGP cards is much lower than that of high-end PCI-e cards. If you make fewer of something, the unit cost tends to be higher. Ditto graphics heatsinks versus CPU heatsinks.

The CNPS7000 may be superior to the VF-900 in terms of total heat tranferred per second for a given input (although I'd be interested to see how close!) but the VF-900 is a lower volume, product which is more complex to manufacture and is going to cost more as a result.

Now that the VF-900 can be had for about £23 in the UK I'm going to head out and get one!