SPCR

VGA cooler shootout on LegionHardware compares products from Thermalright, Zalman, and Arctic Cooling.

well at least they put all the important vga coolers in the review. as for the review itself, its a bit lacking. no pictures of each cooler. no pictures of installation of each cooler. no pictures of the test rig.

that last bit may be the point where critics pull at the most. was it an open air environment or in a case? one of the biggest advantages that the arctic coolers had was it expelled hot air out of the case. well if their all in open air environments, this huge advantage just gets squashed.

another thing, i never did see anywhere in the review where they stated what fan they used on the thermalright coolers. since they dont come with fans. one would assume they used the thermalright "recommended" fan, which is an 80mm panaflo L1A.

lastly, they didnt do any type of noise comparisons. i think they mentioned once that all the coolers were generally quieter than the stock cooling, but it was very vague and short. they also didnt do any testing with undervolting, and how well each cooler does with reduced airflow from such technique.

yes. it's difficult to gauge the relevence here, as we have no idea what speeds the fans were spinning, whether the accelero and silencer were using dynamic throttling, etc. I saw a review of the V1-ultra where they slowed the fan to 1600rpm, in an attempt to show a true comparrison to the X1, and in that review, the X1 was cooler, and quieter. Temperatures are meaningless if we don't understand the testing methods, and if control variables are not held constant for each item tested.

Lol, unfortunately we do live in an imperfect world. It does however give a rough idea about their relative cooling potential and at least an attempt to point out which ones are quieter.

Here is a better review at PureOverclock, closed case, water cooled, silent computing concious reviewer with attempts to qualify the noise, various fan speeds tested, plus attempts to address the exhaust function of the Silencer, albeit no case temps, no dBA readings and no Thermalrights.

As for the V1s, Thermalright does have an "OEM" fan listed with specs on their website; maybe that is the bundled fan?

The V1-Ultra does come with a 15 X 80 fan. A noisy one at that.

that was a real lame review, checkout this one as it's a little better setup and appears to be more believable. http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=743

One shows that the Zalman is nothing impressive... the other shows them performing very well. Which one is it?