Closer Look

We liked this new Thermaltake solution from the very beginning. Of course, the package and exterior are very important for the first impression of the product. Take a look yourselves:

In fact, we had real trouble opening the package: we had to use the scissors. As you can see from the photo above, the set includes two heatpipes (the Zalman ZM80C-HP cooler we had in our lab at the same time, has only one heatpipe). Besides the heatpipes, we found two large aluminum heatsinks with the Thermaltake logo on them, a user’s installation manual and a small box with all the accessories for proper cooler mounting.

Inside the box there were:

• Two retention frames;
• Solid plate taking heat off the GPU;
• Footing plate for the back heatsink;
• A tube of Thermaltake’s brand paste;
• 3 plastic bags with screws.

There was no retention mechanism on the heatsink for an optional fan, unlike by Zalman ZM80C-HP cooler: the CL-G0003 is supposed to ensure sufficient cooling in the passive mode, when it is cooled down only by the airflows inside the system case. Another proof of this supposition is the 2 heatpipes instead of only one by Zalman cooler. Thermaltake’s engineers believe that an extra heatpipe should improve the heat transfer between the top and the bottom heatsinks sufficiently. As for the thermal paste, Thermaltake supplied its product with a pretty big tube, which will last you more than one cooler installation. The thermal paste is of very high quality: it is thick and should have decent thermal parameters. Besides, unlike the notorious Titan paste, the paste from Thermaltake can be easily washed off any surface and hands.

The user’s manual is put together very compactly, but still describes the installation procedure in detail. There is a mention of RADEON 9700/9800/PRO in the manual, but nothing more than that: no other limitations or comments about the type of the graphics adapter you might be willing to use this cooling solution for. Theoretically, the cooler can be installed on any PCB featuring two mounting holes next to the GPU, since the cooler boasts adjustable retention mechanism. Nevertheless, there are no memory heatsinks included with the CL-G0003, so we assumed that this solution will not be suitable for the top-end graphics accelerators, such as RADEON X800 XT/X850 XT.

At first we still decided to check whether CL-G0003 will work with a RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition graphics card. However, from the very beginning the Thermaltake solution proved unable to cool down this powerful graphics card efficiently. According to our benchmarks, the heatsink warmed up to 93^oC, so that we couldn’t even touch it, despite the fact that we left the system case open.

After a while we decided to install the Thermaltake CL-G0003 onto RADEON X800 XL, because this graphics adapter is quite fast and at the same time not very expensive, which makes it extremely popular. At the same time, the card is based on ATI R430 graphics processor, which is manufactured with 0.11micron production process, and hence dissipates not too much heat.