Every gamer knows that keeping their video card cool is important. Sitting down at a computer to play several hours of your favorite game will put your video card through the paces and this can cause performance drops as the card heats up. Normally I run the stock VGA cooler that comes on the cards I have, but today we are going to look at changing the coolers completely. ZEROtherm has sent me a set of their GX815 Gamer Edition VGA coolers to test on my XFX 7900 GS cards in SLI. These cards should give the GX815 coolers a pretty good run for their money.
First Impression:
When it comes to gaming, one of the most important areas of the computer is the video card. Regardless of the video solution you use, increased heat will drop your performance. Today we are going to take a look at a pair of coolers from ZEROtherm. To give the GX815s a fair test, I will be testing them on a pair of 7900GS video cards that are a bit lacking on the cooling side. You can read up on just about any 7900 series video card review and find that just about every reviewer finds the cooling to be a little lacking. The stock coolers are small and do not offer adequate cooling for memory. I will also test these on two different motherboards showing the difference in performance with the difference in slot configurations.
The ZEROtherm GX815 comes in a bright silver metallic colored package that is sure to catch your eyes attention. The rear of the package provides the consumer with detailed features and specifications for the GX815 as well as a couple of graphs to show performance stats.
Opening up the box you will see the included hardware and mounting accessories for the GX815. A place for everything and everything in its place, there should be no problems with shipping this VGA cooler.
Removing the plastic container from the box you might wonder where the instructions are at first glance. Rest assured they are included. They are tucked in a little pocket on the end of the plastic.
Here we have the simple instructions unfolded. There isn't a lot to the instructions, but as you will see later on, there isn't much to installing the ZEROtherm GX815.
The ZEROtherm GX815 has a unique fin style to it. It has a 6 mm heatpipe that has a total of 120 cooper fins around it. The GX815 uses a dual ball bearing blower style fan, which is also thermally controlled with an integrated temp sensor.
