X1900XTX stock cooler vs vf900 and some extras

[NightCrawler™]

I got my vf900 this weekend and decided to get it mounted today...

First off... when I was about to remove my X1900XTX I noticed something odd.. In the picture you can clearly see a spacing between the front RAM chips and the cooler..


Personally I think it's beyond retarded when you buy a $500+ GPU the fitting of the cooler is so pathetic!

Anyways lets get on with the show....

The Zalman vf900 cooler.. standard with Zalman is a nice complete package...
I won't be using the blue heatsinks though...


The tools required to perform the surgery.... (sponsored by Heineken)


The patient....


First we remove the stock cooler....


In this pic you can clearly see those three RAM chips never made any contact....


All cleaned up with Arctic Clean....


Test fitting the cooler with the new heatsinks... You can also see I'll be using heatsinks on the back of the card to cool the power regulators...


One thing I really didn't like was the wire coming out of the fron of the cooler... so disassembly time it was... (also gave me an oportunity to check on a future mod)


And separated... Mind you getting those screws out was a nightmare.. I even had to abuse a screwdriver to be able to remove them...


Remounted and fitted the spacer and washer....


Next up was mounting the heatsinks... the one at the bottom left with the angle was one which needed extra attention as the size of the heatsink was larger and could touch electronics if not fitted carefully....


Lovely.....


Next is to flip the card upside down and mount the screws... I advice you to let the dual slot hang over the table so the card fully rests on the cooler..
Also when tightening the screws always fasten them diagonally...


All done....


Plenty of clearance....


Mounted inside the case...




So what did all this stuff bring.... well apart from reducing the noise from a 747 to a mosquito it also aided to the temperatures....

All tests below were done by running a 3DMark05 test with a closed case with an ambient temperature of 23°C..
I gave the case 30-40 minutes to settle it's internal temperatures to normal temps prior each test.

First test was a run with stock clocks and have the drivers control the fan speed..
Idle: 54°C
Load: 89°C

Second test was with the same clocks but force the fan at 100% 747 noise..
Idle: 40°C
Load: 65°C

Third test is with the vf900 with the fan at 50%
Idle: 40°C
Load: 74°C

Fourth test is with the vf900 fan at 100%
Idle: 37°C
Load: Load 71°C

Fifth test is with the Zalman at 100% and the clocks at 684/801 1.425vcore...
Idle: 39°C
Load: 75°C


So to sum it all up... the Zalman performs nicely albeit less then I hoped for.. It shaves off 15°C when both coolers run silent... but loses by 6°C when you crank up the stock cooler to 100%
There's little to no difference temperature wise when having the cooler at 50% or 100%

So why would you prefer the Zalman above the stock cooler.. first of all the noise the stock cooler produces is enough reason to get one... second, the bad RAM mounting I saw with the stock cooling worries me enough to say that heatsinks are a much safer way to go..... Third.. it does reduce the temperatures and cools the other parts of the GPU a lot better...
For those with this anal thing of looks.... face it, the stock cooler looks like a Boeing 747 squashed into a meat grinder and got a plastic white painted cover...

Soo.... to say the Zalman is all that great is not true either...
The standard blue heatsinks are IMO insufficient for the cooling of the RAM hence I replaced them.. The cooler is really expensive and if you're going to replace those heatsinks it gets even more expensive..
But.... the main beef I got with this cooler is that a] it gets beaten by the stock cooler at 100% fan speed and b] unless you have proper airflow the heat will stay longer inside your case and heat up the rest of your components by 1-2°C where the stock cooler actually reduces overall temperatures by ~1-2°C when it blows at 100%

Regardless of the pros and cons I think the Zalman is a great cooler.. it performs very nicely and is really, really quiet....

[hot_fifty]

how can you temps be so good.. mine is over 80 load at 100 % fanspeed also vf900cu. Did you test artiscan in atitool

[Houdini]

Please test temps in ATI TOOL, much more req.

[hot_fifty]

yyeah I thought the same thing.. Then he will see real load temps and they are high, very high

[lawrywild]

AFAIK some x1900s are hotter than others by quite some degrees..

[Cobalt]

Also hes using an inverted case (thats what it looks like in the pic) where the heatpipes work a lot better. I know that modern heatpipes work better upside down than they used to but its not the optimal position.

What happened to your CNPS9500 that you had on there, or was that a different card?

[hot_fifty]

he had to on a nvidia card 7800GT(x) I mean

[hot_fifty]

I want a atittool stresstest

[NightCrawler™]

I'll get an ATiTool stress test LOL... The reason I didn't is because ATiTool crashes on me when I use higher clocks then default..

And I sold my golden 7800GTX...

[NightCrawler™]

10 minute stress test at stock clocks...



I could clearly see the disadvantage of the cooler not having a exhaust like the stock cooler has... the air inside the case got slowly warmer so my temps went up from rock solid 80°C to 82°C in 7-8 minutes...

[Cobalt]

Ouch, I don't like the look of those temps...

[NightCrawler™]

Me neither.. but it's still a bit cooler and with less noise.....

[Getttosmurf]

that card must be like a volcano seems nvidia will recive my money if i upgrade anytime soon

[DTU_XaVier]

that card must be like a volcano seems nvidia will recive my money if i upgrade anytime soon

IIRC it swallows somewhere around 130-140w??

Best Regards

[NightCrawler™]

X1900 XTX @ 100% load it peaked at 290w @ Idle it peaked at 165w (taken from Guru3D)

[payne280]

anyone know if the X1900GT is this hot?

[Sparky]

that card must be like a volcano seems nvidia will recive my money if i upgrade anytime soon

IIRC the 7800GTX was no iceberg. I believe the 7900 series is cooler running but face it the modern graphics cards are all gonna produce a ton of heat.

The new cooler that HIS came out with for their X1900 series cards is great, reported temps are much lower with much less noise. Basically an AC silencer - IMHO the DHES is almost a necessity now to get that heat out of the computer.

I wish AC made a silencer for the X1800/X1900 series instead of that accelero thing DHES makes so much more sense!

[GoThr3k]

(sponsored by Heineken)

do you really like that beer?

Try some belgian beers mate
sorry for the offtopic

[Hystrix^]

It's a shame

btw, nice temps

[NightCrawler™]

Yeah.. yeah.. yeah.. I know all about your beer... Untill I can buy Abdij beer the same easy way and at the same price as Heineken I'll keep my own brand...

[GoThr3k]

sorry for the offtopic
nice review btw