Well, as I promised earlier in the week, I 'm posting my findings after fitting one of these Zalman aftermarket coolers to a POV GTX 470.

Tips when fitting

- Borrow or buy a set of precision screwdrivers before removing the stock cooler from the PCB. Test each head, and use the one with zero 'play' in it when you turn it. I borrowed a set from a sparky at work. As for the exact size that worked for the card, well it said PH1 x 65 on it, which I'm assuming in screwdriver language is phillips head 1. This fitted perfectly.

- Before removing any screws, run furmark for 10 mins to warm up the threadlock. I did this on someone elses recommendation, don't know if it made any difference but I didn't have one single problem with screws that wouldn't turn. Remember to push down with some force slightly when turning.

- Unless you have severely under-developed baby fingers, you'll need some tweezers to put the rubber washers on the back of the black video memory heat sink.

- All washers bar the clear pvc ones have adhesive backing, which helps enormously when assembling the cooler. The clear pvc ones don't need adhesive anyway.

- You'll need a small ice lolly shaped piece of plastic to put the Zalman thermal paste on the video ram. It's very goopy, and doesn't apply very well. Looking back on the installation I wish I would have tried some of the MX3 people talk about on here. It is nigh on impossible not to spill some on the PCB when applying it to the ram, but it's none conductive so isn't a big deal.

- Once you've put the thermal paste on the RAM and GPU, fitting the rest of the cooler to the card is an absolute doddle. Just a case of turning it upside down and turning 4 screws much like you would fasten down a heatsink on a cpu.

Performance

At stock clocks my 470 used to sit at 45-55 when idle. With the Zalman, it idles at 25. The best part about it though is the noise when loaded. I can run an overclock of 850 now, thanks to the help of some lads on here, and even with the fan mate controller on minimum, the card doesn't go above 50C. The previous POV stock cooler would have been up in the 90's with these settings.

Overall I'm impressed with the cooler, in particular no longer having to listen to a jet engine 4ft away when I have a game on. Good stuff

Thanks for the write up, was eyeing-up one of these bad boys myself. Big diff in temps, very impressive.

Yeah great cooler.

matja said:

Thanks for the write up

Click to expand...

Yep. Nice one.

Thanks for the tips, got one of these for my GTX480 and will be fitting it next week sometime.

Hope the furmark tip helped, those Temps are very good.

Thanks for the write up. I have the Msi 470GTX and my idle temps are 36-40c and whilst gaming on fallout nv hits 79c. I've bought the Gelid Icy Vision Rev 2 and plan to fit it tomorrow. Will do a similar write up.

Much appreciated lads. I can't help but think if the 480's and 470's came with this cooler in the first place, they wouldn't have got half as much criticism as they did on launch.

Fitted today - used MX 3 rather than the paste it came with.

Dropped idle temps by 14c

Dropped load temps. by 30c.

Most important of all I can hear myself think again.

Excellent product

Just noticed that I quote 14c better at idle - probably more accurate figure would be 10c+. The load temp difference is bang on however.

Fitted my VF3000f to my GTX480 today. What a great piece of kit this is!

I have to admit I was sh***ing bricks at the thought of actually fitting the Zalman as it is my first attempt at anything like this.

Anyone who's sitting on the fence because they're not sure about the fitting should have no fear as I'd say if i can do it then anyone can! The tips on the forum have been very useful and I'd agree that the correct screwdriver is very important. You just need to take your time and double check the instructions/diagram before starting each stage of the job.

The most difficult part for me was applying the thermal paste. If you are a guitarist like me a thin plectrum is ideal for application as it's quite a fiddly job applying it to the ram. The supplied paste is very thick and stringy but just clean as you go if you get any on the board/components. I used ArticClean thermal material remover and thermal surface purifier for old paste removal and cleaning up after application. It took me about an hour and 15 mins in all from start to finish to complete the fitting, but if you've done this sort of thing before you'd be much quicker.

Results:- I have my GTX480 clocked at 850/1700 and with the fan on the Zalman at minimum (inaudible) it sits at 31/32c in my Corsair 600T case. I just tried it under load on DCS A10c for around 20 minutes with the fan still on minimum and temps never went above 70c. It was hitting around 92-94c on the stock fan/heatsink which also sounded a bit like the Warthog taking off!.

To sum up I'm very pleased, and the silence is GOLDEN!

Could anybody give me an idea of the size? Reviews show photo's of the card, but never actually in a case. I'm just curious if SLI is possible with 2 slots in between the x16 slots? ie. x16, x1, x1, x16 layout

Invertigo said:

Could anybody give me an idea of the size? Reviews show photo's of the card, but never actually in a case. I'm just curious if SLI is possible with 2 slots in between the x16 slots? ie. x16, x1, x1, x16 layout

Click to expand...

Fitted - 3 slots gone - one for the card + 2 for the cooler. Small it is not .

Also noticed that my cpu temps looked to have increased by approx 2c - probably fair to say that the cooler is taking the heat away from the gpu and dumping it into the case thereby causing the cpu temp to go up a bit.

As I'm writing this speedfan reads 33c for each of the 4 cores on my 9650 running at 4ghz. Gpu reads 30c - prior to fitting the gpu was at 40c+ and the cpu's were at 30c approx.

Personally am more than happy with the trade of.

So for a complete noob, how hard would it be to do this

Would it be possible to fit another card underneath though? Obviously your slot layout may well be different, but say it was another x16 slot below, would it fit? Only reason I ask is my 'under construction' rig is designed to allow sli in the near future, and buying this cooler would render that idea a waste if it prevented me

Invertigo said:

Would it be possible to fit another card underneath though? Obviously your slot layout may well be different, but say it was another x16 slot below, would it fit? Only reason I ask is my 'under construction' rig is designed to allow sli in the near future, and buying this cooler would render that idea a waste if it prevented me

Click to expand...

My board doesn't support SLI, so I couldn't say yes or no either way. However, if it's any help, the Zalman fitted to the card is close to twice as thick as the normal stock cooler.

franco_22 said:

So for a complete noob, how hard would it be to do this

Click to expand...

I'd say you need experience in changing CPU's purely for the thermal paste application, but other than that, it's fairly straight forward if you follow instructions to the tee.

Id say sli would be a bit iffy with this cooler, dont think it would be possible on my own board, even though the space between pcie slots is pretty good.



Asus p6t dlx v2

I would say SLI is probably a no no once you've attached this, it's a product designed for the one high end card gamer.

setter said:

Id say sli would be a bit iffy with this cooler, dont think it would be possible on my own board, even though the space between pcie slots is pretty good.

Click to expand...

Ah shame, the GD65 has the same spacing between the x16 slots. Might have to have a look at the Gelid cooler, supposedly a fair bit slimmer!

I was also considering SLI in the future, when the 470's come down in price a fair bit. What stopped me though is the fact im not experienced in w\c, and can't possibly envisage how i could have two overclocked cards with stock fans running at the same time on a high setting. One is bad enough, two would be completely ridiculous.

So, when the 570's come out, and the price has dropped down a bit, I might consider that path.

Of course, the gelid is the other option. please post findings if you get one.