Viewing page 3 of 6 pages.
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
INSTALLATION
The Duorb ships with large set of additional heatsinks — 12 for memory
and 4 for VRMs. It should be enough to cover all the extra components that
require cooling on modern video cards.
|
Accessories and mounting hardware.
|
The installation of the main cooler is fairly simple and similar to the
Xigmatek Battle-Axe
and Zalman VF1000.
First, a pair of mounting clips are screwed onto the base. Since it's mandatory
for all cards, we would have liked to have seen them built directly onto
the heatsink or attached straight from the factory.
|
Preparing the base.
|
Four double-sided hex screws are installed in the appropriate mounting
holes. The longer side goes through the mounting holes on the graphics card
and out the other side where barrel-shaped nuts secure them.
|
Oh, sh...nap!
|
Unfortunately, one of the hex screws snapped inside the nut as it was being
tightened. Imprecise machining of the tiny thread caused binding, and just a
smidgen of extra pressure was all it took for the rod to snap. The broken part
was stuck in the net and impossible to remove. This mean we lost not just one
screw but also the matching nut.
The exact same problem occured during our Xigmatek Battle-Axe review. We really
wish aftermarket cooler companies would use shorter, stronger screws.
|
The nuts on the back.
|
A search through our spare parts bins turned up nothing that could substitute
for the missing parts. Faced with the choice of securing the heatsink on three
sides or two, we went with two, to balance the pressure on the GPU. A check
of the thermal paste footprint confirmed that good contact was being made, and
the cooler could only be twisted slightly when torque was applied. Extreme care
was used in tightening the two screws/nuts.
|
Duorb installed on our X1950XTX test card.
|
We found there was no overhang, meaning the Duorb will fit in any case that
can accomodate a full-sized graphics card. This may vary slightly depending
on the card and GPU location.
|
Duorb ramsink on the left, blue Zalman ramsink on the right.
|
The ramsinks were left off our test card because they did not appear to be
re-usable, and the test card seems to function fine without them. We did install
one of them just to check the thermal adhesive, and it was fairly secure. To
say they are low-profile is an understatement — they are only 2mm tall.
Being so short and having only five thick fins it's doubful they provide much
cooling.
|
Clearance.
|
The clearance under the cooler was ample and uniform at 9mm. There was no reason
the ramsinks could not have been taller — they could be quadrupled in height
and still fit underneath the Duorb.
| Help support this site, buy the ThermalTake CL-G0102 DuOrb VGA Cooler from one of our affiliate retailers! |
|
