X-bit labs

New VGA Coolers from Zalman and Gigabyte: Zalman VNF100 and Gigabyte V-Power Review (page 6)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

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

Installation Tips

The installation procedure of Gigabyte V-Power cooler is extremely simple (you can download the detailed installation instructions from the company web-site, a 1.94MB file in PDF format). First you have to stick aluminum heatsinks to the graphics card memory chips (making sure that no heatsink will be in the way of the cooler heatpipes once installed). Then you insert the pins in the retention holes and tighten the spring screws at the reverse side of the PCB. This is what Gigabyte V-Power looks like on Radeon HD 2900 XT:

Unfortunately, you will not see the performance results for Gigabyte V-Power on a hot graphics card like that, because the cooler base was practically “hanging” on the metal frame around the GPU without even touching its heat-spreader.

However, it fit perfectly onto GeForce 7900 GS:

The same was true for Radeon X1950 GT from Palit and for the reference GeForce 8600 GTS.

The only disappointment is the recommended retail price of $50, which seems to be a little too much for a cooling system like that, in my opinion.