Testing
The Zalman VF1000 LED and RHS88 VGA coolers were tested on an NVIDIA 8800 GTX PCI-E video card. Baseline tests were conducted with the stock NVIDIA cooler and I also included the results from the Thermalright HR-03 VGA cooler (which we tested earlier this year on the same platform) for comparison.• Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI Intel edition motherboard
• Pentium Extreme Edition dual core 955 (3.46 GHz at 1.22 Vcore)
• (2) Corsair CM2X512-8000UL DDR RAM
• NVIDIA 8800 GTX 768MB 575/675 video card
• WD1200JD SATA HDD
• SilverStone Zeus 750W power supply
• Windows XP Pro with SP2
Testing was conducted using the stock Zalman fan at three different voltages/speeds. The ambient room air temperature remained constant at 23?C +/-0.5?C. The GPU was loaded by running rthdribl.exe (Real-Time HDR IBL) at 1600 x 1200 and the graphic card temperatures were monitored using Everest Ultimate Edition. The 80mm VF1000 LED fan speed was measured with a Laser Tachometer (Extech 461995) and the fan voltage was supplied from a small DC bench power supply. Sound level readings were measured with an Extech 407738 digital sound level meter from 3’ away with a background noise level of 28 dBA.
Integrated 80mm Zalman VF1000 LED Fan:
• Hi speed 12V 2,678 rpm
• Med speed 9V 2,144 rpm
• Low speed 5V 1,293 rpm
The following data is presented for comparative purposes only. Your actual results may be different depending on the variables unique to your system (video card, overclock, ambient temperature, case air flow, temperature monitoring, etc).
Note: Earlier this year when we tested the HR-03, the Everest hardware monitoring software did not report the graphic card MEM and Amb temperatures. This functionality was added in a later version.
As you can see from the numbers, the Zalman VF1000 LED cooler and RHS88 heatsink does a good job of cooling the 8800 GTX video card. With the integrated fan running at high speed (12V) the GPU idle temperature dropped 9°C and the load temperature dropped 17°C (compared to the stock NVIDIA cooler). However, the Zalman fan running at high speed is also noisier than the stock cooler. With the fan speed turned all the way down to a very quiet 1,300 rpm’s, the 8800 idle temperature still dropped 6°C and the full load temperature dropped 11°C. Better temperatures with less noise; that’s what we like to see!
While the raw cooling performance of the VF1000 LED/RHS88 combination isn’t as good as the larger HR-03 fitted with a 92mm fan, it’s important to remember that the VF1000 LED/RHS88 is a compact, single slot cooling solution while the HR-03 is not.
Unlike many OEM VGA coolers, the VF1000 LED/RHS88 does not exhaust any of the waste heat out the back of the case. All the heat dissipated from the video card(s) gets dumped inside the case so you will need good case ventilation to take full advantage of the VF1000 LED/RHS88 performance potential and to keep all your other goodies (CPU, HDDs, etc.) from running hot.
