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1 2 3 NextNovember 19, 2004 by Sean Boyd with Mike Chin
In a previous
review, we examined the combination of a Sapphire 9600XT VGA card and
the Arctic
Cooling ATI Silencer 2. It proved to be much quieter than the stock heatsink
and greatly improved cooling.
But how would the new breed of Silencers perform
when mated with a more powerful video card? To find out, we obtained a Chaintech
AA6800GT Apogee powered by an nVidia
GeForce 6800GT GPU. This sample came to SPCR as part of a new review program with Newegg, the on-line PC components dealer based in California.
One of the largest video card boxes ever.
The Chaintech 6800GT Apogee card is much more powerful than the Sapphire 9600XT used
in the previous ATI Silencer 2 review. As expected, it was also much hotter and, you
guessed it: WAY LOUDER! Can the Arctic
Cooling NV Silencer 5 help quiet it down while still providing the cooling
it requires? We are going to find out.
The Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5.
The Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 is made to fit the nVidia GeForce
6800 series. To help you determine whether the NV Silencer 5 fits your card,
Arctic Cooling has provided a height
restriction drawing on their website. The drawing indicates the location
of required mounting holes as well as they varying clearances necessary.
For those of you who plan to keep your video cards for a really
long time, Arctic Cooling has provided a (kind of silly) 6-year warranty.
SPECIFICATION & DESCRIPTION
The NV Silencer 5 is not much different than the other new AC VGA Silencers.
To get an idea of the similarities, please refer to our ATI
Silencer 2 Review. The NV Silencer 5 has a much larger (and heavier)
heatsink and copper base, weighing 430g. It also doesn't have a passive
memory cooler because all of the RAM is on the GPU side of the card. The fan
on this Silencer runs at 2000 RPM.
The Chaintech AA6800GT Apogee is a very powerful card. Some of
the specs are:
* NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT chipset
* 256MB DDR3 SDRAM
* 256-bit memory interface
* 350 MHz engine clock
* 900/1000 MHz memory clock
* 16 pipeline engine technology
One issue we had was with the ridiculous packaging size; unfortunately most
of the current high-end video cards have this type of packaging. The entire
contents could have easily fit in a box half the size.
Not only that, but the white cardboard box was encased in another box and it
even had a plastic carrying handle.
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