Two new coolers for NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX or Minus 20 degrees to the reference

Due to the lack of a competitive graphics solution on the market in the upper price segment of single-chip video cards, the “reign” on the throne of NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX / Ultra has been delayed. Moreover, it took so long that NVIDIA did not come up with anything better how to simply withdraw them from production, replacing these video cards with new and cheaper GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB. The new product turned out to be successful, but it still loses in performance to the GeForce 8800 GTX / Ultra in high resolutions and high-quality graphics modes, so the owners of the most expensive video cards do not experience any particular worries.

But what they should be worried about is the temperature regime of their GeForce 8800 GTX / Ultra video cards. Of course, not everything is as bad here as on the AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT / XTX, but problems with the high temperature of the GPU and the board as a whole do take place. With the advent of the corresponding water blocks in the assortment of well-known brands, adherents of liquid cooling systems easily solved this problem, but for those who did not have a liquid cooling system, there was little choice among air coolers for video cards. Rather, it did not exist at all, with the exception of the relatively recent Thermalright HR-03 Plus. Despite the quick “demise” on the market of video cards of the GeForce 8800 GTX / Ultra class, today’s article is intended to expand the range of coolers for these video cards, since now two new coolers from the companies will be reviewed and tested APACK and Arctic Cooling.

• ZEROtherm Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800

The Korean company APACK and its brand ZEROtherm are currently practically unknown in the Russian and European markets. But on the North American continent, the products of this brand occupy a leading position. Once upon a time we did not know, for example, about the wonderful Scythe coolers, but now this name is associated with such supercoolers as Infinity or the anniversary Ninja Copper. So with today’s article, we are opening a new manufacturer of air cooling systems for us, since relatively recently we received for tests the entire line of APACK ZEROtherm coolers, with which we will gradually introduce you. And opens acquaintance, in the context of today’s article, a universal cooler for video cards ZEROtherm Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800.

The compact box, equipped with a plastic carry handle, has a silver paint finish and looks very beautiful:

The cardboard box has a cutout for the entire front side of the new cooler, and on the side of it there are nine icons with key features of the cooling system, one of which speaks of the “killer” performance of Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800. In the upper left corner of the front side of the package, there is an imitation of a ribbon. which says that the cooler is optimized specifically for cooling NVIDIA GeForce 8800 series video cards.

The back of the box is literally dotted with information:

Here you can find comprehensive technical specifications, a list of compatible video cards, a graph of the cooler’s noise level depending on the rotation speed of its fan, and even a comparison diagram of the Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800 with reference cooling systems GeForce 8600 GTS, Radeon X1900 XTX and GeForce 8800. Simply put, read everything – and you do not need to test, and so everything is clear 😉.

Inside the cardboard box there is a transparent plastic box, tightly closed with a lid, in which the cooler and accessories of the delivery set are located in two compartments:

The following components are supplied with the Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800:

• an aluminum heatsink for the NVIO chip for GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX video cards;
• four aluminum radiators for power elements of GeForce 8800 video cards;
• twelve aluminum radiators for video card memory chips;
• ZEROtherm ZT100 thermal paste;
• cooler fan speed regulator;
• instructions for installing a cooler and radiators in several languages;
• set of bushings, screws and adhesive pads for the governor.

The new cooler from ZEROtherm looks stylish and even somewhat futuristic:

The top of the design is covered by a silver plastic casing with an original grille above the fan. The cooler dimensions are 169.7 x 97.1 x 54.4 mm and weighs 372 grams.

We turn over the Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800 and see that its structure is completely made of copper:

The only exception is the aluminum frame for mounting the cooler, which is installed above the pipes and which in no way affects the cooling efficiency.

So, at the heart of the cooler are four copper heat pipes 6 mm in diameter coming out of the copper base. On the tubes, 52 thin copper plates are strung in two sections. The entire structure is closed with a plastic casing, which, in addition to the decorative function, also contributes to the direction of air flow to the PCB elements of the video card. This cover can be easily removed (you only need to unscrew four self-tapping screws), opening access to the fan:

By the way, it is in this “stripped” form that the Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800 is recommended by the manufacturer for use by overclockers on overclocked video cards. Moreover, one of the options for using the cooler on video cards with a low level of heat dissipation is to install it in passive mode, that is, without a fan at all (which can also be easily turned away). It should be noted that in this case the GeForce 8800 GT is indicated as the maximum possible video card.

Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800 is equipped with a 7-blade impeller from a 92 x 25 mm fan, mounted on a radiator at a slight angle. The fan speed can be varied from ~ 1500 to ~ 3300 rpm (± 10%) by means of the included regulator. The noise level in this case will fluctuate within 19 ~ 40 dBA, and the air flow will be from 26.8 to 57.7 cfm. The guaranteed life of the fan with the mysterious “UFO Bearing” is 40,000 hours, or about 4.5 years of continuous operation. Not bad, if true, of course.

The cooler is 54.4 mm thick, so when it is installed on video cards, two adjacent slots on the motherboard will be inaccessible for use:

A protective film is glued to the base of the cooler with a warning about its obligatory removal before installation. The surface of the base seems to be even polished, but traces of the cutter are still visible.

Despite the presence of the number “8800” in the name of the cooler, which clearly indicates the purpose of the cooling system, the Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800 is a universal cooler compatible with most modern video cards. To make sure of this, just look at the instructions for installing the cooler:

On the AMD Radeon HD 3850 and 3870, which are not on the list, the cooling system is great, which I checked. Separately, the instructions indicate video cards with which the cooler is incompatible. Among them are all Matrox video cards (remember those more?), NVIDIA video cards of the PCX 5xxx series and GeForce 6600/7600/7900 AGP and ATI Radeon 2900/9550/9600. It would seem that it is also a decent list, but note that it contains only outdated and irrelevant video cards.

Installing a cooler is a snap. First, screw the threaded studs into the holes corresponding to the video card equipped with the cooler:

Then, not forgetting to apply thermal paste to the GPU surface, install the video card on the cooler and pull it from the reverse side with nuts and springs:

This is how ZEROtherm Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800 looks like on a GeForce 8800 GTX video card:

By the way, in the case of this video card, you need to install an aluminum heatsink on the NVIO chip (green in the photo). In addition, you need to glue small heatsinks on the power cells, as well as heatsinks on the memory chips of the video card (the latter were not used during testing on a temporarily provided video card).

We look at the video card with a cooler inside the case of the system unit:

As I said above, immediately two adjacent slots to the video card on the motherboard are blocked. After installing a video card with a cooler inside the case, it remains only to place the fan speed controller in a convenient and accessible place, connect it to the cooler and you can already see how the four blue LEDs of the fan backlight are on:

It remains to add that the recommended cost for the reviewed air cooling system is $ 39. We will check the efficiency of ZEROtherm Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800 in the corresponding section of the article, but for now let’s move on to studying the new “extreme” cooler from Arctic Cooling.