Zalman ZM80A-HP VGA Cooler

A big heatsink

Click for Link to the Review

 

Spike could you be a nice fella and measure from the top of the card pcb to the top of the zalman for me

I need to get this measurement as some1 has fitted a zalman 80 in their shuttle and I've tested the ZM80 and that doesnt work I'm wondering if this will

Fanks

Nice review btw that a 201 casey?

 

Really wish I hadn't epox'd ramsinks to my ti4400 or I'd buy one of these babies... oh well, my next g/card can have one

Nice review mate,

Rob.

 

Nice Review, !

Just what I was looking for, I like the colour too, looks real stylish!
Looks like one of those beautys will be going on my ti4200 if its compatible?!

 

I hope this helps gordy:



PublicNME: Yes, it should fit your ti4200 fine

 

Oooh thanks spike its about 2.7cm above cheers will see how much clearance I have in the shuttle

 

Hey, I've just ordered the A version. PC-Cooling.de have it in stock, just arrived this month. They also ship international and accept Visa, Mastercard and Amex ... I'm curious to see how it performs on my Gf 3 Ti 200 ... But anywayz, that'd be one more fan gone, which is GOOD ! Those 40mm mofos are loud !

Cheers

[DE]FreD_S

 

Why exactly was this "highly recommended"? I read through the review, and see some pros to this cooler. It is clearly quiet and it obviously performs okay, but what makes this that much better than the stock heatsink? 5MHz is really nothing (1.6% overclock)

The pros: Slightly quieter (GPU fans aren't that loud for most cards) and it looks nice.

I'm not trying to knock this, as it seems to be a nice cooler for someone who wants some quiet, but highly recommended? That really should be saved for products that go above and beyong the expectations of the reviewer and the reader.

 

I was waiting for your (BTs') rewiew of the ZA80A-HP. Now I gotta buy one. (Trust only BT, they'd nEVER lie.)

 

The GF4 fan in my computer was my loudest for a fairly long time...

I think any product that let's you do away with one of the more important fans in your system, doesn't cost much and which looks stylish probably deserves our recommendation

Rob.

 

The reason for this is because it manages to cool the card to the same performance of the stock cooler with fan. I also think that a lot of time has been put into making the instructions and overall the product is very well made (and the things rob mentioned above). I'm sorry if this didn't come across in the review.

I have also been told that I didn't stress the point that you need to clean the residue from the white spirit. It is important to make sure that nothing is left between the die and the heatsink (bar the thermal past). It is also very important that you do not mark or scratch the die when using the knife to clean off the remains of the 'TIM' it might be worth using somthing like a credit card to removed it since it will not mark the chipset. Just use common sense to clean up the die, making sure you don't leave residue on it or damage it in any way.

 

I found my Creative Ti 4400 was the loudest part of my system actually (I think Rob this is probably the same card you have right?) I asked creative what the dB rating was for that card and they said that independant tests had said something in the high 30s. What I did (before this zalman was released) is replace the stock fan with Thermal Take's all copper heatsink. This already reduced the noise to 29dB but I wen further and 7volted the fan making it inaudible at more than a few centimeters away. I doubt this is would let me overclock very well but I've had no problems at all running UT2003. And I don't have any case fans so it's probably sweating quite a bit.

You should use acetone which doesn't leave any residue. I found a little bottle of it in a chemists' - presumably for nail varnish remover.
Also Spike I noticed you didn't apply any paste to the black areas around the silvery circle of the Geforce chip. When I did this I put an even layer of AS3 over everything including the black area which was actually much harder to spread because of the rough surface. Do you think this would make a difference?

Also what's the difference between the ZM80-HP and the ZM80A-HP?

 

Nail polish remover is probably more than 95% acetone but I don't recommend using it, they put oils in it, colourings etc. I'm sure it would leave more residue than white spirits.

It's actually pretty difficult to find a decent pure solvent on a chemist's shelf so you were very lucky if you got straight acetone, I used to 'borrow' mine from work Acetone kicks at removing thermal pastes but make sure you keep it well away from plastics.

Rob.

 

Well like I said I got a bottle which says acetone. Doesn't say how pure but then it doesn't say that it's nail varnish remover specifically so it might be pure. And so do you have a Creative Ti 4400 Rob?

 

The difference is the bigger heatsink surface area of 1300cm³ of the A version to 1000cm³ of the normal version. That's all. I think the this is the best investment I've made for a long time, since I bought my Atlantis Waterblock

Cheers

[DE]FreD_S

 

No, just an Inno3D piece of rubbish - it clocks fairly well though (around 310/670 if I remember my numbers right, but I haven't clocked it properly for a while).

Rob.

 

Firstly, as ever a quality review...
But surely you missed the point:

You ran it in a case with a hefty CPU-fan and (presumably) some other powerful fans too... You've proved it's a capable gfx-cooler replacement, but surely it's designed for people who use <20dB fans, and run near silent setups.

I'm not criticising the review's comparison against a similar system without a Zalman VGA cooler, but that they maybe could have provided a silent system as well to emphasize the whole point of the Zalman heatsink - it's silent!

 

I thought it was obvious that the lack of a fan implied it was silent. I would also like to say that just because my CPU fan is 80mm doesn't mean it is noisey.

 

Fair enough then...

 

I finally got this heatsink (god this is the second time I'm writing this because my comp just crashed - either there's something wrong with the card or I shorted something while fiddeling around inside the comp ). Anyway, for anyone who has this heatsink, I was wondering if the back heatsink was supposed to touch the back of the card or not. When I tried screwing it on to the "nipples" () I found it rested about 5mm off the back of the card and if I had attached the larger finned heatsink ontop it would have been very wobbly. Is it supposed to rest on the back of the card? (I assume that's what the sticker is for) and if so how come I had to remove the nipples to get it to fit? It's a very tight fit at the moment. And I'm worried one of the nuts is going to ping off someday.