X-bit labs

New VGA Coolers from Zalman and Gigabyte: Zalman VNF100 and Gigabyte V-Power Review (page 10)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 07/31/2007 | 05:43 PM ]

Conclusion

Our today’s test session demonstrated that both new cooling solutions turned out pretty successful, each in its own way. Zalman VNF100 will cope perfectly with overclocked mainstream and budget graphics cards. As you could see, this cooler installed on an overclocked GeForce 7900 GS proved as efficient as the reference cooling system of this graphics card, only Zalman newcomer was completely noiseless.

Gigabyte V-Power is a much more efficient cooler although it is indeed positioned as a solution for the top price segment. I wish we could check out this cooler on Radeon HD 2600 XT: hopefully the manufacturer will take into account this frustrating issue and make sure that this cooler can be installed on the graphics cards that really need it.

Of course, we cannot disregard the price of the new cooling solutions. At this time we can only base our conclusions on the manufacturer’s recommended price, which will hardly make them competitive in the market. As we see, the same Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 even with an additional 120-mm fan will cost less than Gigabyte V-Power and their efficiency is simply incomparable.

In conclusion I would like to draw your attention to one more important thing. In fact, I believe you may have already noticed yourselves that there are fewer and fewer universal cooling systems coming out lately. For example, although the recently launched Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 and S2 are considered universal solutions, they have different positioning for two different graphics card types. The today’s Zalman VNF100 and especially Gigabyte V-Power also cannot fit on all graphics cards out there. We had to completely exclude from our today’s tests the third cooler, Thermaltake TMG ND2, because it wasn’t compatible with any of the graphics cards participating in our today’s test session. The diversity of old and new generation graphics cards with different PCB layouts do not allow the cooler manufacturers to design a universal air-cooler for them. those available in the market today (such as Zalman VF900-Cu LED) are not powerful enough to cope with the top graphics accelerators and sometimes lose even to the reference cooling solutions. Therefore, overclockers who are about to upgrade their graphics card need to purchase at least two coolers or be prepared to modify the cooling system in order to meet the thermal requirements of their new accelerators, if that is possible at all…