Installation
The Thermalright HR-03 VGA cooler is designed to work with the majority of new video cards from both ATI and nVIDIA. Unfortunately, it does not support the latest nVIDIA 8800 cards. You can find a complete list of compatible cards here.
The Thermalright HR-03’s universal hardware uses the four thru-holes around the GPU for mounting. An assortment of low profile and full height V-RAM heatsinks come with the cooler that can be attached to the V-RAM chips with the pre-applied adhesive back tape.
For this review I used two nVIDIA 7800 GTX video cards and a pair of HR-03 heatsinks. One cooler was mounted with the fin array on the processor side of the video card while the second cooler was mounted wrapped-around to the backside of the video card. This allowed me to test the coolers in various configurations, with and without a fan.
The first step is of course to remove the existing video card heatsink fan assembly and carefully clean the top surface of your GPU. I used the new Thermalright Chill Factor thermal compound for all testing. The HR-03 mounting hardware includes an X-shaped, insulated back brace, four threaded studs, the main retention bracket, and four thumb screws. In both mounting scenarios, the thumb screws always go on the opposite side from the heatsink fins.
I installed the first HR03 cooler with the heatsink on the same side as the processor and V-RAM. This card will be used primarily with a fan for testing.
Note that in this configuration, the video card/HR-03/fan take up four full slots when installed into the motherboard.
Single HR-03/7800 GTX with 92mm Panaflo H1A
The second HR-03 cooler was installed wrapped around the card, which results in a more compact installed footprint.
Wrapping the cooling fin array around to the backside of the video card places it in close proximity to the fan on our test rig’s Ultra-120 CPU cooler. As we will see later, this configuration results in very good performance without an additional fan.
Single HR-03/7800 GTX in pseudo-passive mode
I mounted a 92mm Panaflo fan onto the #2 video card using the supplied mounting wires. Like other Thermalright heatsinks, the wires fit into holes in the fin assembly and then clip over the fan’s base flange. I found the wire retention mechanism a little more difficult to use than on previous Thermalright coolers. They work OK, but the wires don’t seem to be formed quite right for a 92mm fan.
