My expiriences with Gigabyte Radeon9000 & Zalman HP80-C

They make noise, too.

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ljmeijer
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Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:52 am

My expiriences with Gigabyte Radeon9000 & Zalman HP80-C

Post by ljmeijer » Mon Nov 24, 2003 1:36 am

Well for anyone wondering if the mounting holes on the (gigabyte, don't know about others) radeon9000 cards would host the Zalman HP80-C well, the answer is 'sortof'.

I checked the zalman website for the requirements, and it said I needed mountingholes on my card. I checked out my radeon9000 card, found two mounting holes, and ordered the cooler.

It turns out however that the mounting holes aren't in the spots that the zalman would like them to be. If you look at the car with the connectors to the left, and the agp interface at the bottom, the holes are too close to eachother vertically.

You can get the heatsink to mount however, but you need to apply it slightly tilted in order for the screws of the heatsink to line up with the mounting holes. Since this is a bit of a tight fit, the screws have a tendency to not go straight in the holes, but at an angle, which gives a bit of trouble on the backside, since you need to mount another heatsink at the back. After a bit of tweaking though I managed to get both of them installed, albeit slightly tilted.

When I had to connect the heatpipe from the front to the backsink, I had the idea that I had to bend it slightly. It was such a small amount however that it didn't frighten me at all. I'm suspecting this to be the case in a normal scenario too, since the front and back heatsinks did line up properly.

All in all it's installed, and doesn't get hot at all (just feeling with my hand). I'd say defenitely under 30 degrees (20 degrees room temprature (celcius))

Would I advice is to anyone? It depends on your upgrade plans I assume. The radeon9000 doesn't need such a good cooling solution, I think it could have been passivly cooled in the first place. So if you're not planning on upgrading, you're probably better off with a different cooler that fits more properly, as any cooler can cool this card.

If you're planning on upgrading to the 9800 at some point in time, like I am, I'd say get the HP80-C. You can use it on your new card, and it cools the 9000 just fine. Installation is a bit bumpy, but not all that bad (and I'm not that much of a techy). I'd buy the same thing again if I could change my mind.

Bye, Lucas

MGP
Posts: 519
Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2002 4:32 pm

Post by MGP » Mon Nov 24, 2003 9:46 am

Sounds interesting, but -- to be perfectly honest -- using a ZM80C heatpipe cooler on a Radeon 9000 is extreme overkill...even a Radeon 9000 pro would have been fine with a NB32J (chipset cooler) or just any decent heatsink. My Radeon 9200 runs fanless, as do most Radeon 9000's. I would say that the ZM80C is more appropriate for Radeon 9800+/NVIDIA 5600+ class video cards.

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