Zalman VF1000 & RHS88

[Frederik S]

To read this review go to: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zalman/ZM-VF1000LED/

Please Digg the review to help us promote it.

[WarEagleAU]

That is a great price considering its all copper, beautiful, the gpu sink part of it is mirror smooth and polished beautifully, cools like a mug and its just about the best think for silence and performance. Beautiful review.

[Ketxxx]

Zalman stump up the goods again. IMO their stuff has gotten too pricey just lately (since the VF900) when the VF900 first come out the thing was like £30-40.

[trt740]

The Thermalright hr03 kills that cooler and yes it is bigger but it run super quiet and cools about ten degrees better than that Zalman does and cost 40.00 less.

[wazzledoozle]

Not much of an improvement, and it doesn't vent the exhaust out of the case like the stock cooler.

[sweYoda]

First off... very nice review! excellent!

Second, I've got a Gainward 8800GTX and idle temp is 54 C with fans @ 100 % and Load temp is 68 C... However I think you have Antec 180 but I am not sure... I've Antec 900, maybe that's why I've got a cooler card?

Third and final, where did you buy RHS88? Because I've bought the VF1000 but I can not find RHS88 anywhere!!

[sweYoda]

Forgot to mention that I've got 23.5 C in the room.... Yesterday I had 20 C and idle was 49 C and load was 65 C

[sweYoda]

LoL... maybe I should have read your report a little bit better since now I can see everythin g is there xD... haha.. sorry dude...

[Frederik S]

I don't really know where you can buy the ZM-RHS88 profile, but if I were you I would keep an eye on Newegg.com, they are usually good at getting new stuff not long after release. I guess the air flow in a Antec 900 is a bit better than in a P180 therefore you should get better temperatures. Also worth noticing is that temperature diode on the GTS tends to report a higher temperature than it should. So I guess that a combination of the two is what gives the difference. Besides that it's pretty hard comparing temperatures between two cards because of the quality of the temperature diode. Even two cards from the same product range and revision can report +-10 degrees.

All taken into account I guess it's like comparing apples to oranges.

[sweYoda]

i like apples more

okey, so urs is not for sale? ^^ xD

btw... then u got rhs88 directly from Zalman, for pure testing?

[Xaser04]

Originally Posted by wazzledoozle

Not much of an improvement, and it doesn't vent the exhaust out of the case like the stock cooler.

This is the problem I have with alot of after market coolers.

One thing that could be added to reviews is other component temps / ambient case temp to see whether they are affected by the hot air not being exhausted.

I am really thinking about sticking the stock cooler back on my X1900XT as the accelero X2 it currently has exhausts all of the hot air straight onto the pci-e slot, I mean what a dumb design?!

[Frederik S]

If you have a well ventilated case the 30-60 CFM less exhaust air shouldn't make a difference at all. All of the temperatures in my system wasn't affected at all by not having a GFX cooler with exhaust vent (of course they could potentially have increased by about 0.1-0.9 degrees without me knowing because the temperature diode readouts are integer values.. In the review you can see how cool or hot the card's components run via. the ambient card temperature sensor reading.

[sweYoda]

Originally Posted by Frederik S

If you have a well ventilated case the 30-60 CFM less exhaust air shouldn't make a difference at all. All of the temperatures in my system wasn't affected at all by not having a GFX cooler with exhaust vent (of course they could potentially have increased by about 0.1-0.9 degrees without me knowing because the temperature diode readouts are integer values.. In the review you can see how cool or hot the card's components run via. the ambient card temperature sensor reading.

What is CFM?

As long as the hot air is removed from VF1000 & RHS88 I am satisfied! btw...

[Grings]

it does look pretty cool, but this is the first gpu in a long time that i've not felt it necessary to change the cooler

[pbmaster]

Originally Posted by Grings

it does look pretty cool, but this is the first gpu in a long time that i've not felt it necessary to change the cooler

I totally agree. With my card at 660 core/900 mem stock cooler my load temps never go above 65*C. The stock cooler for this card is pretty good IMO.

[Grings]

it's noise that usually makes me change cooler, unless a card has a particularly crap cooler that hinders a decent overclock

and getting back on topic, its a shame the rhs88 hasnt got a bigger gpu hole, it would be a good solution for people with watercooling who dont want a full cover block

[Frederik S]

I think the RHS88 is pretty easy to mod. All you really need is a dremel and then take some of the material away around the GPU .

[sweYoda]

I have 220 CFM air going out from my chassis.

[margatenj]

In the past (and a few still do) overclocker's would sand down their chip surface and their heat syncs to remove all flaws ... and on the heat syncs they'd end up with a perfectly flat mirrored finish if they took their time and did it right... and everyone back then was always be amazed, and the overclocker would get better temps with the modified chip and sync.

Now these days most company come out with mirrored surfaces on their products trying to copy what the old school overclockers did in the past but I've almost never seen a Reviewer state the very important fact in their reviews, is the companies mirrored surface perfectly flat. Reviewers always point out, "hey look, it reflexes crap."

An easy way to fully test the sync and add the results to you review would be to hold the sync upside-down and put a drop or two of water on the surface where the sync meets the chip and lay a small piece of glass on top flatting the water out over the surface and you'll easily be able to spot defects if any (using dark liquid food dye instead of water would add to the visibility and maybe possible to photograph).

Most modern glass is flawless, but you'll want to test the glass ... rotate the glass, and also flip the glass while doing the above test to see if its the glass or the syncs surface that is flawed.

Thermal grease is used to remove small flaws involving such hardware, but its always best to have almost no need for grease to get the absolute best heat transfer... you don't want pockets of grease under your heat syncs.

I've bough one of these syncs and it had a lovely mirrored bottom, but it was distorted to the point where the glass seesawed and I had to sand it down to remove the (no) fun house mirror imperfections. I used a piece of square glass, wrapped it in very fine sandpaper to repair the flaw, now the sync & chip sits flawlessly flat to one another.

If I would have bought this sync locally I would have just returned it.

[tkpenalty]

heatsink... not sync.

[DrunkenMafia]

I love Zalman always have, I have bought over the years 6 VF900's. But I am not to impressed with this one... Those temps you had on your review really aren't that good mate... I know its a lot quieter and all but I was expecting a little more...

Awesome review though

[macbeth]

Will it fit 2600XT and 8600GT from MSI?

[trt740]

Originally Posted by sweYoda

First off... very nice review! excellent!

Second, I've got a Gainward 8800GTX and idle temp is 54 C with fans @ 100 % and Load temp is 68 C... However I think you have Antec 180 but I am not sure... I've Antec 900, maybe that's why I've got a cooler card?

Third and final, where did you buy RHS88? Because I've bought the VF1000 but I can not find RHS88 anywhere!!

Try yours running orthos prime and 3dmark06 running at the same time then tell me your temps. Under those conditions mine is at 58c with the thermalright. Plus read this the two are compared head to head. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/T...ight/HR-03Plus

[hozer]

Well this is my first post and I dont want to come off as a troll ok. I just want to say that is I like the article but you had stated that the Zalman VF10000 kept the gpu cool at the same as the stock. Well then.... Why change the stock kooler then? I see no point in changing the cooler if it does not get the gpu cooler that the stock cooler. So why change cooler?

[Frederik S]

Hozer most people change to an after market cooler because it's less noisy than the original. The Zalman VF1000 cools the GPU at low speed just as well as the original cooling solution at max RPM. The difference in noise emissions is huge.