by Alexey Stepin
04/18/2005 | 03:30 PM
The cooling of contemporary graphics accelerators is a not that trivial task, especially taking into account that some top-end GPUs are much more complex from the architectural point of view than any of the system CPUs. That is why they very often generate as much heat as contemporary CPUs do, even despite significantly lower working frequency.
Since we are taking about the cooling solutions for the graphics adapters, we should keep in mind certain limitations imposed on the size, weight and configuration of these solutions. In particular, the heatsink of this cooling system cannot be too big and heavy, otherwise, the card will simply damage the AGP or PCI Express slot. The heatsink geometry will also hardly be able to accommodate an 80mm+ fan that is why the designers of graphics card cooling solutions have to go for smaller 60mm fans tops. This fan can only be efficient for powerful graphics adapter cooling when it works at higher rotation speed than the larger fans, which automatically implies that the system will produce more noise.
I really doubt that there are many users (except for a few dedicated PC enthusiasts), who would be happy with an extra noise source inside their system. That is why well-known cooling solution developers, such as Zalman and Thermaltake introduced special silent cooling solutions for graphics cards.
Here is would like to make a quick notice. When you install a graphics card into your ATX case, the GPU cooler faces the bottom (there are a few rare and expensive exceptions, such as Lian-Li PC-V1000, for instance). This is hardly good for proper VGA cooling: the hot air stays under the graphics card longer because it cannot rise freely and get blown outside the case by the fans located on the case back panel. If there is an additional heatsink on the back side of the graphics card, which is connected with the top heatsink with a heatpipe, the problem can be solved. Besides, this design solution increases the heat dissipating surface so greatly that it appears enough for proper cooling even without the active fan. A cooler like that is absolutely noiseless, since there are no moving parts at all.
So, today we are going to introduce to you a solution of the kind offered by Thermaltake (we have already reviewed an analogous solution from Zalman, for details see our article called Zalman ZM80D-HP: Make Your Graphics Card Completely Noiseless).
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:
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 93oC, 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.
Despite a pretty detailed installation manual supplied together with the cooler, it took me about an hour to completely install CL-G0003. The cooler has pretty complicated construction and consists of many smaller components. But let's start from the very beginning.
First let's cover the chip with a layer of thermal paste:
The heat dissipation footing for the front and back heatsink plate were pretty easy and quick to mount. here they are:
Then we had to fasten the frames. here we had a little problem with the fastening clips, but we managed to cope with them:
However, after that we faced real difficulties. The thing is that before installing the heatpipes, you have to fill the semicircular gaps on the mounting surface with the thermal paste. During this operation you have to hold the graphics card vertically, otherwise the paste will get everywhere. We did our best, but it was real hard to prevent the paste from getting beyond these gaps. Luckily, it is very easy to clean off, as I have already mentioned above.
The heatsinks mounting appeared even more complicated. The mounting holes on the heatsink should coincide with the tiny mounting holes in the footing plates. This is when a magnetic screwdriver would help a lot, without it you will have really hard times. When the heatsinks have been mounted, the card looks as follows:
As you can see from the picture above, the memory chips are hidden under the heatsink, and in this case it would make completely no sense to try enhance their cooling by blowing a stream of air at the shorter side of the card, because the air stream coming from the fan on the system case side panel will be blocked by the heatsink. In fact, if you have this side case fan, you can improve the GPU cooling significantly. As for the memory, the GDDR3 working at the frequencies not exceeding 500MHz (1000MHz) should not be heating up that much, so you might be able to do without additional cooling here.
All in all, these construction peculiarities of the CL-G0003 do not make it an easy-to-install cooling device. In fact, Zalman ZM80C-HP also is not the easiest one to work with, but it seems to be the distinguishing feature of the enthusiastic solutions like that. By the way, the graphics card equipped with a CL-G0003 device doesn’t weigh that much at all, because its heatsink is made of aluminum. Some copper coolers, such as those used on Leadtek A400 graphics cards, for instance, weigh much more.
RADEON X800 XL graphics card equipped with a Thermaltake CL-G0003 cooler was tested on the following platform:
For the performance comparison we used a reference RADEON X800 XL graphics card equipped with a standard cooler from ATI technologies. We decided to test CL-G003 in two modes: in passive mode without additional air cooling, and with an additional 120-mm fan working at lower rotation speed at 5V. In the latter case, the noise level doesn’t get disturbed as the fan is very quiet, and you can hardly notice it against the background of the processor cooler, hard disk drive cooler and the fans of the Levicom 550XPE-P power supply unit. We installed this additional fan so that the air flow could cool the card from behind, where the power supply connector is all the way through the CL-G0003 device.
We selected FutureMark 3DMark05 and Half-Life 2 game as our major test applications. In half-Life 2 we created a special demo record on d1_canals_12 level, which added more workload on the graphics subsystem as it was very rich in pixel shaders. For the same reason, i.e. to increase the workload on the graphics subsystem, all tests were run in 1600x1200 resolution with enabled FSAA 4x and 16x anisotropic filtering. The results were measured with the Riva Tuner utility, which can read temperatures from the thermal diode built into the contemporary GPUs.
Before we took the results from the diode in idle mode we had the loaded system stay idle for 20 minutes, so that the graphics processor temperature could stabilize. After that we started 3DMark05 benchmarks set and had each test run 3 times to minimize the measuring error. When the card rested for another 20 minutes to cool down, we launched the popular 3D shooter, Half-Life 2, and ran twice the xcanals05 demo created on d1_canals_12 level. During the test session the room temperature in the lab was 26oC.
Here are the results we obtained summed up on a diagram for your convenience:
In idle mode Thermaltake CL-G0003 yields to the reference ATI cooler by about 3oC, however, once at least some additional air flow is involved, it wins back these 3oC and even gets 4oC cooler: the large heat dissipating surface tells. The Thermaltake cooler loses the same way to the reference ATI solution in 3DMark05 and Half-Life 2, however, we can see it lagging behind only in passive mode. If there is at least a weak airflow around the heatsink, CL-G0003 turns incredibly efficient. It manages to win 14oC in 3DMark05 and the whole 16oC in Half-Life 2!
This is an excellent result, keeping in mind that this is a practically noiseless solution. You will be able to obtain this great performance in a case with active airflow inside, such as Chieftec BX/Dragon case, for instance, or any other system case where you could install an additional fan next to the expansion cards. In passive mode the results are not so encouraging, although the cooler still does its job not bad at all, at least for the RADEON X800 XL/X700 PRO/GeForce 6600 GT type of graphics accelerators. And of course, it will be just perfect with any graphics adapter based on a less powerful and less “hot” GPU.
Well, we have every reason to recommend Thermaltake CL-G0003 to all of you who are willing to make the system as quiet as possible. Of course, if you own a high-end solution such as RADEON X850 XT/X800 XT or GeForce 6800 Ultra/GT, this will not be your choice. CL-G0003 will not cope with cooling of such powerful graphics accelerators. But there is a more powerful solution that Thermaltake is offering today for the top-of-the-line graphics cards: CL-G0009, which is bigger in size and transfers the heat outside the system case via additional heatpipes and a copper heatsink.
Highs:
Lows: