Compatibility and Installation Tips

It is very important to point out that you get a detailed and very easy to understand installation instructions together with the cooler, but you can also download them from the official company web-site. We would like to discuss graphics card installation procedure first.

Graphics Cards

Here is the list of graphics solutions compatible with the Zalman VF2000 LED cooler:

At the time of tests I only had ATI Radeon HD 4870 at my disposal. So we are going to use it for our further experiments with Zalman VF2000 LED. Here is a complete schematic of the graphics card installation procedure:

As you know, Radeon HD 4870/4890 graphics cards require special cooling of their voltage regulator components. Unfortunately, there were no special heatsinks among the standard accessories bundled with Zalman VF2000 LED that we received for our review. However, in the end of June Zalman announced a new massive heatsink called ZM-RHS90 designed specifically for this purpose. But since we didn’t have it available at the time of tests, we had to remove the lower plate from the reference Radeon HD 4870 cooler and put it back on the card:

However, this trick didn’t work, because when I tried to install Zalman VF2000 LED, its heatpipes hit against one of the sides of this plate that is why we had to give up the idea of using it together with Zalman and leave the voltage regulator components “naked”. We decided that since Zalman didn’t include anything with the cooler but listed Radeon HD 4870 among the supported graphics solution, then they must be taking the responsibility for whatever may happen to the graphics card during the tests.

As for the actual installation of Zalman VF2000 LED cooler onto the graphics card, it is extremely simple. First you have to insert the mounting spindles with rubber rings into the loops on the retention panels attached to the cooler base and then secure the cooler by tightening the screw-nuts placed over washers at the bottom of the card PCB:

This is what a graphics card with a new Zalman VF2000 LED cooler looks like:

The top view shows that two slots next to the graphics card must be empty. You can read the same in the installation instructions for the graphics cards.

Mild blue lighting looks pretty attractive in the dark:

I have to add that I didn’t stick the heatsinks onto the memory chips during our test session.