AeroCool Double Power, Thermaltake DuOrb, Zalman VF1000 LED and a few more good coolers for video cards

AeroCool Double Power, Thermaltake DuOrb, Zalman VF1000 LED and a few more good coolers for video cards

AeroCool Double Power, Thermaltake DuOrb, Zalman VF1000 LED and a few more good coolers for video cards

With the advent of video cards of the AMD Radeon HD 3850/3870 and NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT class on the market, the problem of choosing and purchasing alternative cooling systems has become urgent again. This is due to the noisy and insufficiently efficient reference coolers of these video cards. Standard cooling systems actually have two modes of operation: either the coolers do not make noise and do not cool, or they cool well, but they are too noisy. The BIOS firmware in the Radeon HD 3870 with the so-called “normal powerplay” calms the cards down a bit, but does not help to lower their temperatures. And the enlarged turbine impeller of the new reference cooler GeForce 8800 GT does not bring any significant changes. Of course, overclockers cannot be satisfied with such an “alternative of choice”, so the question naturally arises of replacing the standard cooler with another cooling system.

Our Laboratory regularly checks the effectiveness of cooling systems for video cards that appear on the market. So today we will immediately test three new coolers plus one “Turbo Module”, comparing them both with standard cooling systems for video cards and with some other coolers. Among the “contestants” today are two novelties from Thermaltake and Zalman, as well as a cooling system from AeroCool. Coolers are fundamentally different from each other in the design of the radiators, but all of them use copper heat pipes. However, now, with rare exceptions, all air cooling systems for the components of the computer system unit are made using heat pipes. Let’s start our acquaintance with coolers with a product from AeroCool.

  • AeroCool Double Power (EN-51040)

An almost unknown company on the Russian market
AeroCool
, which was noted for the quickly discontinued Dominator cooler, is presented today by an air cooling system for video cards of a rather original design. The packaging of the cooler is a cardboard backing, closed on top with a plastic shell molded to the shape of the cooler and its components:


The reverse side of the package contains detailed technical characteristics of the cooler, as well as its key features. Country of origin of AeroCool Double Power – Taiwan.

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The cooler package includes the following components:



  • fan speed regulator;
  • set of screws, nuts, gaskets;
  • eight aluminum radiators for installation on BGA memory chips of a video card;
  • thermal paste Aero-700;
  • instructions for step-by-step installation of the cooler.

The design of the cooling system is particularly original. However, see for yourself:



AeroCool Double Power consists of two parts – a heat sink and a radiator with a fan – which are interconnected by a single copper heat pipe with a diameter of 6 mm. The tube exits from the base of the heat sink, makes a loop in the large heatsink, and ends again at the base.

The heat sink is completely made of aluminum and equipped with thin low ribs:



Through the heat pipe, heat is transferred to the main radiator with a fan installed on it:



As a result of such an interesting design, the dimensions of the cooler were 178 x 120 x 47.5 mm, which is clearly an extraordinary indicator for an air cooler for a video card. But the predominant use of aluminum in the design of AeroCool Double Power (with the exception of one copper heat pipe) has reduced its weight to 210 grams. Looking ahead, I note that this is the lightest cooler in today’s tests.

The 90mm fan is designed to cool the radiator fins suspended from the tube and base. Although I personally do not understand why perforation is not made in this very base, because in this case the air flow from the fan would be directed directly to the PCB of the video card:



The fan rotation speed should be regulated in the range from ~ 2000 to ~ 3000 rpm. Indeed, according to monitoring data, the minimum impeller speed was ~ 1920 rpm, and the maximum was ~ 2970 rpm.

The aluminum surface at the base of the cooler is finished fairly well:



Here you can also see the universal feet for attaching the cooler to the video cards. The list of video cards with which AeroCool Double Power is compatible is quite extensive and is shown below in the table with technical characteristics. Note that this cooler cannot be installed on the Radeon HD 2900 XT, since its base rests directly on the metal frame around the GPU, without contacting the GPU itself. However, this is an insignificant drawback, since such video cards have already been discontinued and have not become popular among overclockers.

Installing a cooler on video cards is quite simple. First, we screw four pins into the holes in the PCB of the board, fixing them on the front side with small nuts. And then we put a cooler on them and press them with bushings with springs:

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The fastening is reliable, there is no rotation on the surface of the chip. This is how the AeroCool Double Power installed on a Radeon HD 3870 looks like:



You can clearly see that the main heatsink with a fan hangs over the power section of the board, and if there were a slot in its base, this would certainly have a positive effect on cooling this part of the PCB.



When installed on a Radeon HD 3870 video card, the external cooler radiator extends upward beyond the PCB dimensions by 4 cm, and from the rear of the board by 1.5 cm. On other video cards, similar radiator overhangs may be different.

Inside the case of the system unit, the picture is also not very happy:




In the standard ATX case ASUS ASCOT 6AR2-B, the external radiator with a fan rests against the hard disk, and on the ASUS P5K Deluxe motherboard it covers two adjacent slots. Although, in the second slot from PCI-E, a short modem or sound card will fit well.

The fan is equipped with a white backlight:



Looks very nice at night. The recommended cost of AeroCool Double Power is quite high at $ 45, which somehow does not match with the widespread use of aluminum in its construction.

  • Thermaltake DuOrb (CL-G0102)

Quite a large, vertically oriented box
Thermaltake DuOrb
made of thick cardboard and has two cutouts on the front and back sides:




Thanks to these cutouts in the cardboard, almost the entire cooler can be seen without taking it out of the package. The back of the box contains detailed technical specifications of the cooler, its key features and a short list of supported video cards. Manufactured by Thermaltake DuOrb in China.

Inside the box there is a transparent plastic shell that securely fixes the cooler and a small box with accessories of the delivery set:



In the latter, the following components are tightly packed:



  • instructions for installing the cooler in several languages;
  • 10 low-profile aluminum radiators for video memory chips;
  • 4 aluminum radiators for installation on the power elements of the board;
  • two guides for mounting a cooler;
  • screws, plastic washers, mounting sleeves;
  • packet of thermal paste.

At first glance, the design of the cooler resembles that of the Zalman VF900 LED, only multiplied by two:



The “skeleton” of Thermaltake DuOrb is two copper heat pipes with a diameter of 6 mm, emerging from a copper base. A large number of thin copper fins are strung on these tubes, which are cooled by a pair of fans.



We can say that schematically the cooler is an eight, which was noted earlier in our news.

Thermaltake DuOrb measures 180.5 x 98.5 x 30 mm and weighs 324 grams.



The base of the cooler is even (checked by the imprint of thermal paste on the glass, and then on the GPU), but there is no polish inherent in some models of Thermaltake coolers:

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The two TT-8015L fans are 80 x 15 mm and have blue backlighting.


The fan speed is constant and amounts to ~ 2500 rpm with an air flow of 23.8 CFM and, for some reason, the noise level hidden by the manufacturer. The latter, against the background of other test participants, subjectively turned out to be quite high. It is not clear why the new cooler is not equipped with a speed regulator or a primitive 5/7 volt adapter. The guaranteed life of the fan bearing is 50 thousand hours.

Thermaltake DuOrb is intended for installation on video cards based on NVIDIA chips of the 6800/7800/7900 and 8800 lines, as well as on video cards based on AMD chips of the X1800 / X1900X / X1950 families. The new cooling system is also installed without problems on the Radeon HD 2900/3850/3870 that are not in the list. The installation procedure itself is elementary, which is how almost all coolers for VGA and CPU differ recently.

Two fastening plates are screwed to the base of the cooler, into the holes of which threaded bushings are then screwed:



Well, then we put the video card on the cooler lying on the table (it is better to do this, and not vice versa) and with our hands we pull it from the back side with threaded bushings:


The Thermaltake DuOrb installation procedure does not involve the use of any tools, and in time the whole process takes no more than 5 minutes.

With the installed cooler, the video card looks very stylish and beautiful:



Thermaltake DuOrb is no more thick than the standard Radeon HD 3870 cooling system:



Thus, only the slot adjacent to the PCI-E connector will be inaccessible on the motherboard:




In the dark bowels of the system unit case, or at night with the side wall of the case lost somewhere in the overclocking hardware, Thermaltake DuOrb will complement the overclocking process with the blue light of two fans:



The novelty from Thermaltake is highly original and is recommended for retail sale for $ 50.


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