OCC Review: ZEROtherm GX815 Gamer Edition Vga Cooler

[Nemo]

ZEROtherm GX815 Gamer Edition Vga Cooler

 

You are 3 hours into that online fragfest and suddenly your screen goes blank. You start wondering what happened to your pride and joy. You finally check the temperature of your video card, and lo and behold, it's way higher than it should be. What do you do? Cleaning the heatsink doesn't help so you are left with a few options. You could leave the case side panel off with a 20inch fan blowing onto your components, you could just hang up the gaming for a while, or you can invest in a new cooler for that hot running video card of yours. Today we will be looking at the ZEROtherm GX 815 Gamer Edition VGA cooling solution that features heatpipe technology, 120 cooling fins, and automatic fan speed control via a built in temperature sensor.

 

Edited May 21, 2007 by Nemo

[Ziggy54354]

very surprised at those results. I own the VF900Cu which looks like a better cooler because it has copper under the fan. The cooler i have is WORSE than the stock cooler. interesting

Edited May 21, 2007 by Ziggy54354

[kush]

Note (for those in the U.S.):

 

Newegg has a $10 MIR on this cooler right now (through May 31st), making the GX815 $28.99 (AR)...For those not totally rebate-aphobic this makes it a pretty nice deal, between $8 and $20 cheaper than the Zalman - depending on the model (non-led and led versions respectively).

 

The cooler and the PDF.

[jammin]

The results are somewhat surprising.

The Accelero is a decent cooler so I wasn't expecting it to be beaten by such a margin.

 

I'd like to know where in the case temperature readings were taken from.

[kingdingeling]

 

that thing does look like a neat cooler, price is decent as well. However, you need to look at the comparison: I bought my Accelero X2 for my X1950Pro for like 12

[anthony]

Wow looks good Also nice to see a new name in the market Maybe I missed it, but what was room temp?

[ccokeman]

Well here you are. I bought the Acellero last year for the purpose of reducing the noise in my case and getting a slight improvement in temperatures those things it does well. The GX815 just does it better. The case temp was taken by hanging my temp monitoring device in the middle of the case. The Accelero blows down and in the GX815 blows out all around including forcing air out the rear of the case therefore bringing more cool air in. Ambient temperature in the room was 75f +/-1f . If you have never seen the base of an Accelero than the term 60 grit ought to ring a bell as to how rough it is. Now make your comparison to the lapped and polished contact surface with the GX815 and you start to see why it out performs the Accelero by so wide a margin. I just re-ran my loop of 3d06 triple loop on each test 72f ambient and you can see the results in the ATI tool log file of the last 4 minute of the run. The temperatures are getting better as the thermal paste settles in. With a card that is probably one of the hottest running around there are not many coolers that can dissipate the heat that this card puts out, this one can. Hope this puts it in perspective for those who doubt the results.

 

@kingdingaling, When i bought mine last year they were $35 US so price for performance gained is a win for me.

[jammin]

Hanging in the middle of the case is a little vague for me, I can still imagine it in several positions.

You could indicate on the picture of your case where it was?

 

It does seem like an impressive cooler by the results you're getting

[ccokeman]

The results speak for themselves. I never expected this cooler to perform this well after reading the horror stories about how bad the Zalman vf700 and vf900 and Fatal1ty revisions performed on this card. Thats why I bought the Accelero. The area the temp device was hanging was straight down from the left hand dimm under the card for both tests. This case used has neither a window or side fan to skew the results just air in and air out front to rear with the side panel on.