Right I have completed some benchmarks using a Club 3D 5870 GFXs card and testing out the new Zalman 58XX GFX card coolers. (I haven't got my hands an Nvidia Sample yet though) The Club3D cards have the standard reference board and cooler from AMD/ATI so this is one of the best cards to test with.

Zalman VF3000-A Graphics Card Cooler (ATI 5830/5850/5870)

I have run Furmark in windowed mode at 1280 x 1024 with the card running at stock speeds.

Stock cooler - Default speed - 69 degrees
Zalman cooler - High fan speed - 38 degrees
Zalman cooler - Medium fan speed - 38 degrees
Zalman cooler - Lowest fan speed - 42 degrees

Results with Stock cooler

Results with Zalman cooler - Full fan speed

Results with Zalman cooler - Half Fan Speed

Results with Zalman cooler - Lowest Fan Speed

As you can see the Zalman cooler performance is much better. The fan on the highest setting is audiable at around the same noise level as the stock cooler at the default fan speed.

On medium the noise is just about hearable, but at low speed the noise is none existant.

The results show only minor differences between the fan speeds on the Zalman with the slowest speed still massively outperforming the stock cooler for cooling. I would recommend running the fan at medium speed for noise vs perfomance.

Amazing temps, easy to install?, is the mem and volt regulators cooled effectively?

The cooler was quite easy to install, took me around 15mins in total. The supplied RAM and voltage heatsinks bond very well with the pre-attached heat tape. Must better bond that the cooler I used to have on my old 2900 from Arctic lol.

The cooler has 2 fans which effectively cool the whole card better than the stock cooler does too.

It's a win-win situation.

I think I may go with one of these, 44c, that's water cooling territory.

Two things first post actually gives the full speed the highest temp, you got the low/high fan speed temps mixed up.

Most people are most interested in the VRM temps, almost all the compatible coolers with the 5870 will drop temps 20-50C load depending on the situation, most of the VRM temps with most of the coolers go up WAY above stock VRM temp levels because the normally tiny sinks you get aren't remotely capable of cooling them well.

Though theres some issues like the Prolimatech, awesome sink, but most people tested with 2x120mm fans, but the dead spot on the fan is just too big for the not that wide sink so a lot of the airflow from 2x120mm's is just not going through the heatsink, 2x92mm's gets better temps and also a 2nd 120mm tends to put its deadspot over the VRM sink which again alters results.

Personally I'm using the prolimatech and the Thermalright VRM cooler on top of that and getting awesome temps on both.

These cards are almost absurdly easy to keep under 40c full load even overclocked and overvolted with silent fans. Just goes to show that blower fans and stupid exhausting designs are ruddy awful for gpu temps, I mean, truly awful. IN a hot room overclocked/overvolted my 5850 was hitting 80C plus and fan getting a little louder than I'd like, on the Prolimatech, sub 40C load.

Other things you can tell from this and the prolimatech though, 92mm fans work better on cards that width, 120mm fans waste too much airflow with deadspots that are too big. Exhaust/stock sinks are awful, and theres no reason all the stock cards shouldn't have that type of design heatsink on in the first place.

Just like memory heatspreaders where people came to believe they were required and non heatspreader memory wouldn't sell well anymore, exhausting heatsink designs are bad, and loud and "normal" designs are so massively better its embarassing. But you read threads here and people think their cases will explode due to higher case air temps.

Ace, can you give us some shots of the mounting hardware? Is it largely compatible? I'm liking the idea the Prolimatech are supposed to release extra mounting kits as and when required, rather than wait 6 months for decent coolers to fit the next gen.

I dont have a camera to hand today I'm afraid but here are some pic's from Zalman.

Here are the temps for the whole card with the Zalman fan on medium.

13th can't come soon enough, Vreg look to be cooled very well.

Very nice indeed
Any chance of a pic with this on top of the card please

Cheers.

Looks great, performs well, no brainer if you're looking to OC and keep that card cool.

Only problem is size, they take up around 3 slots by the looks of things, which may be a problem depending on your case and motherboard etc.

If they make a version that can tame Fermi too, that'd be cool, if anyone ever gets one that is.

Looks like a good deal for around 30 smackers.

Seems like a really well made little cooler tbh. Some poperly made vreg & ram sinks that will fit perfectly, had to mod the last gpu cooler to make the sinks fit.


Aslo Red= Win

Looks very sexy and much cheaper than the AC Extreme GTX.

Just a thought tho what about rear cooling ?

On the AC Extreme they supplied a pathetic back plate for the GTX 280 so I used the existing GTX 280 backplate on mine which is thicker to take more of the heat off the card.

Does the 5870 backside get hot ?

Great looking cooler, deffo get one if I had a ref 58XX...

Lets hope they have stock for my birthday in june.

they should have brought this out for 4xxx series which has heat problems.

I really like the red and it looks to be very well made and thought out.

bring on a 470/480 version!

Nice pics Ace, would have been a tough choice but I caved and got the Prolimatech a couple weeks ago, wasn't sure when Zalman was due out. Looks like its got the standard Nvidia/ATi mounts and is decent value with a hefty enough VRM sink to cool it properly.

The one advantage I think is where the mounts to go through the mounting holes are removeable on the Prolimatech so has a higher chance of being compatible for longer.

Though saying that, AMD have been fairly regular with their mounts and its more an Nvidia thing to change mounting style one gen to the next, the advantage there is, who wants to buy Nvidia for the forseeable future


I just wish these were available 2-3 weeks after launch, every gen we're waiting 6 months till a decent cooler is out, then the refresh/new gen is out in 2-3 months.

Why on earth do they stick with blower/exhaust coolers as stock, they are so ridiculously bad.

The last ram sink is very nicely designed too, as it extends to the last coolable chip, not sure what it is actually, near to the backplate on the xfire connection side of the card. The prolimatech didn't come with anything to cool it, or mentioned/showed anything being put on that chip in the instructions so not sure how hot it even gets, might just be thermal pad to stop any shorting with metal on the whatever it is.

Not compatible with crossfire by the looks of it.