Zalman Fans

I used to think that the VF900 fan was the best.
But now i see the Fatal1ty FC-ZV9, wich has 1200 RPMs more then the VF900.
It's price is somewhat higher aswell, but what do u think abt this?

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Different brand and models performs differently...i don't realy mind having low rpms as long as it has high cfms and does what it was intended to do...cool down my cpu (or whatever it was made to cool respectively)

Reply to aBg_rOnGak

Check out the cooler review at Tom's:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/0 [...] erformance

Reply to Cleeve

I'll never understand that review. I"m staring @ a VF-900 right now....its running at 100% fan speed and I can only hear the 120mm fans I have (there still very quiet)

I can't hear the damn thing ever, so I dont know where the claim of it being audible is coming into play.

Reply to raven_87

Quote :

I'll never understand that review. I"m staring @ a VF-900 right now....its running at 100% fan speed and I can only hear the 120mm fans I have (there still very quiet)

I can't hear the damn thing ever, so I dont know where the claim of it being audible is coming into play.

Dont care abt the noise, 3 dB more isnt a problem with me used to 500 dB.

The review says that the Stock Fan is even better then the VF900 at cooling the card !!! I thought, from everything that was said here, that the VF900 was the best cooling solution, and now i see u were all totally wrong. So whats the deal ??

Reply to Track

Its far better than the stock cooling solution, so whoever wrote that review either didnt A) have it mounted properly or B) recieved a defective unit

Reply to raven_87

That was me... I wrote it.

Don't know if it was defective or not, but I checked and re-checked the results. It was mounted really well.

I used it in a Gigabyte Aurora case, which is almost completely silent. Awesome case, so you can hear things that might be covered up in other cases...

What card are you using it on, Raven? Not all stock coolers are as efficient as the X1900 XTX cooler... Compared to, say, a 7600 GT stock cooler or an X180 GTO stock cooler, the VF900 would be way better.

The VF900 is a good cooler... it all depends on your baseline.

Reply to Cleeve

Quote :

That was me... I wrote it.

Don't know if it was defective or not, but I checked and re-checked the results. It was mounted really well.

I used it in a Gigabyte Aurora case, which is almost completely silent. Awesome case, so you can hear things that might be covered up in other cases...

What card are you using it on, Raven? Not all stock coolers are as efficient as the X1900 XTX cooler... Compared to, say, a 7600 GT stock cooler or an X180 GTO stock cooler, the VF900 would be way better. It all depends on your baseline.

You did not write that review..

Raven, it dosen't make sence for them to have a defective cooler. I dont know why the hype over the VF900, its not even the most quite as this proves, but maybe now it will stop.

Reply to Track

Quote :

You did not write that review.

My name is Don Woligroski, and I most certainly did write that review.

What, you think the writers aren't allowed to hang out on our forum?

Reply to Cleeve

It was on my X1900XT; I acutally had it in a Gigabyte Aurora as well. -- Idle around 38-40C, after the AS5 burned it, load was around 51-52C.

On the stock fan @ 100% fan speed I still was idle around 46C this time of year, and load near 63C.

@ Track

I know it doesnt make sense for manufactorers to ship defective units, but it happens. Sometimes the mounting surface isnt as flat as it should be; either due to shipping or production hiccup and this can impact performance.

I"m not defending the VF-900. IMHO its an average cooling solution. Nothing amazing but it gets the job done. I figure I can pick up something else if I was really all that estatic about it.

Reply to raven_87

Quote :

You did not write that review.

My name is Don Woligroski, and I most certainly did write that review.

What, you think the writers aren't allowed to hang out on our forum?

Prove it. You did not start the Forum thread abt the review.

Reply to Track

Track, trust me, he did write it.

Reply to raven_87

What did you use as a 'burn' test? Atitool will bring it up much hotter than, say 3dmark or something...

Reply to Cleeve

Quote :

It was on my X1900XT; I acutally had it in a Gigabyte Aurora as well. -- Idle around 38-40C, after the AS5 burned it, load was around 51-52C.

On the stock fan @ 100% fan speed I still was idle around 46C this time of year, and load near 63C.

@ Track

I know it doesnt make sense for manufactorers to ship defective units, but it happens. Sometimes the mounting surface isnt as flat as it should be; either due to shipping or production hiccup and this can impact performance.

I"m not defending the VF-900. IMHO its an average cooling solution. Nothing amazing but it gets the job done. I figure I can pick up something else if I was really all that estatic about it.

Your not serious, right? Chances of that are too small, plus defective dosent mean a 10C increase in temperature, but 20-30, or the card would just not work or fry. It being broken as a result being only a little bit worse then the competitors seems planned, and ur not into conspiracy theories are u?

Reply to Track

Quote :

Prove it. You did not start the Forum thread abt the review.

Good lord.

Track, it's not the writer's job to post the review to the site. We just submit the articles, the editor holds on to it until they decide to put it up. They don't even tell us, I have to read it on the site same as everybody. Sometimes it can take weeks.

Have a look at the poster who started the thread... probably Patrick Schmid the editor, not the writer...

Reply to Cleeve

Standard burn in.....Several loops of 05 and 06.

ATI tool, and a couple independent X1xxx overclocking utilities.
All report around the same temp with a 1-3C margin of error.

Now I wish I had one of those laser temp readers :roll:

@ Track

Hey man, I'm just relating what I get with my equipment to what I've been told. Remember, believe %30 of what you see on TV, %50 of what you read and nothing that your father tells you :wink:

Reply to raven_87

Quote :

Prove it. You did not start the Forum thread abt the review.

Good lord.

Jesus, its not that hard.

Still dosent make sence, shouldnt a reviewer work at Tomshardware headquarters? Where did u get the supplies? Who decides who gets to be a reviewer?

I do think there might be some error with the VF900. Every other review, every person has told me that its the best.

Reply to Track

Well, I've personally found that 3dMark loops get me nowhere near the max temps of the Atitool stress tester. Maybe that's the variable causing the disparity... but who knows?

Reply to Cleeve

Quote :

Well, I've personally found that 3dMark loops get me nowhere near the max temps of the Atitool stress tester. Maybe that's the variable causing the disparity... but who knows?

But seriously X2 is 10C better then the VF900 at 2/3 of the cost?
Im starting to agree with Raven and his conspiract theories.

Reply to Track

I certainly dont think its the best by any stretch of the imagination.

If I had the time, I'd go by another VF-900 and a Masscool unit that way I could have a recompare.

I dont understand where your coming from. At one, we have you being very critical of my experience with the unit, and the reviews of it as well. Now your saying its hard to believe its NOT the best because "other" reviews state elsewise;

Then how about you pick which review you like the best and buy the damn thing? If you dont like it - aim for something else.

@ Cleeve.

Little mis understanding here; I used the 3Dmark loops while the AS5 burned in. I really dont want to have to remount the thing on my X1900XT (its under the Maze4) but I'll give my results on my X1800XT soon.

Reply to raven_87

Quote :

Still dosent make sence, shouldnt a reviewer work at Tomshardware headquarters? Where did u get the supplies? Who decides who gets to be a reviewer?

I do think there might be some error with the VF900. Every other review, every person has told me that its the best.

Track, it's not like that. Why pay people for offices when they can do it freelance from home?
You get supplies from the manufacturers. They send them to you for review.

There may indeed be some error with the VF900, but I've tested it to the best of my ability, and retested it to make sure.

I've looked at other reviews on the web, and it seems to perform relative to other coolers as the other reviews show as well. And it worked really well at idle which makes me think it wasn't attached poorly.

You're getting caught up in the stock results at 100%... I haven't seen any other reviewer bother to push the stock fan to max and publish those results as well.

If I didn't push the stock fan to 100% to test it, might you have a better opinion of the VF900? It would fit in with everything you've heard, wouldn't it?

Also the X2 - if I didn't push it to 100% with Atitool, it would be marginally better than the VF900 at best... once again, other reviewers haven't done that, to my knowledge.

More testing gives a better understanding, but you really have to pay attention to the parameters.

Reply to Cleeve

Quote :

I certainly dont think its the best by any stretch of the imagination.

If I had the time, I'd go by another VF-900 and a Masscool unit that way I could have a recompare.

I dont understand where your coming from. At one, we have you being very critical of my experience with the unit, and the reviews of it as well. Now your saying its hard to believe its NOT the best because "other" reviews state elsewise;

Then how about you pick which review you like the best and buy the damn thing? If you dont like it - aim for something else.

I would only NOT like it because i think its not true to the product.
You should happy im citing with u, other then critisize my decisions.

I just the best non-water cooling solution, and i dont know what to pick now.

Reply to Track

Quote :

I just the best non-water cooling solution, and i dont know what to pick now.

If you're looking for a recommendation, get the Kuformula VF1 Plus. At medium speed it sported the best balance of silence and cooling in the test, IMHO.

It's the one I left on the X1900 XTX (see sig )

Reply to Cleeve

Cleeve; I would like to apologize.

I've beening running the ATI too stress while posting, and @ 100% fan speed I'm topped out around 59-60C load. So I'm assuming thats where the difference would fit in.

TBH I didnt think it would scale the core temp like a benchmark would - man was I wrong :cry:

Learn something new everyday I guess :wink:

Thats on an X1800XT - so throw in another 4-5C for the hotter running R580 (just theory) and I"M sure its around 65C.

As for the cooling solution; I agree with Cleeve on his recommendation.

Reply to raven_87

No need to apologize Raven, always worthwhile to investigate the disparities.

Still a good result though, maybe the Zalman doesn't like the airflow in my particular case? Who knows for sure. If I had more time I'd have used a second test case - maybe one with a side fan - to see if the results were different.

Reply to Cleeve

I also own the GIGABYTE 3DAurora and I own two of the VF-900 fans for my 7900GT SLI Setup.

I would first like to say that yes the 3DAurora case is awesome and I loved building in it, a very solid well designed case... but back to the graphics coolers...

I love mine.. for me they didnt have to be the very best performers... I was impressed with the performance and most of all the low noise level.

I run them at a constant 100 percent and I dont hear them over anything else in my computer.

My current idle temps as reported by the Nvidia temp reader are 52C and 45C in a 77F room. Remember the first card is always going to be hotter then the second because of the heat its getting from the second card... but all in all I am very impressed. If you read some of my other threads on overclocking the AMD AM2 X2 CPU you might of seen these numbers...

Temps before new heat-sinks and fans. CPU OC: 2.14ghz GPU: stock
CPU:
IDLE : 35 C
LOAD: 50C
GPU:
IDLE: 49 C
LOAD: 57C

Temps after new heat-sinks and fans. CPU OC: 2.38ghz GPU: stock
CPU:
IDLE: 32C
LOAD: 40C
GPU:
IDLE: 45C
LOAD: 50C

As you can see a significant drop in GPU temps but you have to remember I was using 3DMark06 loops to get the temp. up.... so thats not as accurate as it could be but the best I could think of doing for my NVidia card. I am very impressed with the VF-900 GPU Coolers and I think the review that Cleeve wrote is very accurate the stock cooler is able to push air out, and if you turn up the jet engine your going to get that extra advantage and the air flow to make it work well... you just have to deal with the noise.

Reply to BrockSampson

Quote :

Still a good result though, maybe the Zalman doesn't like the airflow in my particular case?

I have the exact same case that you do bud :lol: :lol:

Reply to raven_87

heheh. Well, maybe the difference is caused by some kind of karmic aurora around my cranium... :?:

Three Gigabyte Aurora users in the same thread? Who knew?...

Reply to Cleeve

You know what i dont get?
The review is the only one ive seen that reaches the 80-90C.
Every other review, and every other person, raven and the guy who posted with the twin 7900 GTs have 50-60C under load, so whats with the 90C load?

And im also looking for least noise, remmember i also have a CPU fan, and the Kuformula VF1 Plus might prove to have the lowest temps but its more noisy.

Reply to Track

Its madness......

Dont play it though. I've got my eye on the Mozart; hopefully soon enough :twisted:

@ Track

Environment might have significant impact on the temps. Its been rather chilly here lately, around 55F; so I"m sure that has something to offer.

Reply to raven_87

Quote :

The review is the only one ive seen that reaches the 80-90C.
Every other review, and every other person, raven and the guy who posted with the twin 7900 GTs have 50-60C under load, so whats with the 90C load?

1. The 7900 GT uses alot less power and puts out less heat than the X1900 XTX

2. 3dMark loops put out quite a bit less heat than the AtiTool stress tester, which I used. In fact, I don't know of any other reviewers who use AtiTool to stress test coolers, so my results will be hotter than most.

Look around on the web... lots of XTX owners are getting around 90 degrees celcius.

There's your answers.

The KuFormula VF1 PLUS is very quiet at medium speed... and very effective as well.
Plus, you can change fan speeds with a switch on the fan bracket, so you can set it to whatever you like.

Reply to Cleeve

Quote :

The review is the only one ive seen that reaches the 80-90C.
Every other review, and every other person, raven and the guy who posted with the twin 7900 GTs have 50-60C under load, so whats with the 90C load?

1. The 7900 GT uses alot less power and puts out less heat than the X1900 XTX

2. 3dMark loops put out quite a bit less heat than the AtiTool stress tester, which I used. In fact, I don't know of any other reviewers who use AtiTool to stress test coolers, so my results will be hotter than most.

There's your answers.

The KuFormula VF1 PLUS is very quiet at medium speed... and very effective as well.
Plus, you can change fan speeds with a switch on the fan bracket, so you can set it to whatever you like.

Obviously the Nvidia 7900 cards will make much less heat, but this is just crazy. It shouldnt matter much what test ur doing, the 3DMark tests use 100% of the GPU so the max temps for it would be around 60-70C, how can it ever get to 90C? You cant use more of the GPU, and even if u did it wouldnt raise the temps - "load" is "load", u cant say that "load" is 60C and then say that its 90C. Once a review says load then thats around the max the GPU can output, so having temps wich are much higher then load is crazy. I hope u understand my point here, cause this is confusing.

Reply to Track

Quote :

Once a review says load then thats around the max the GPU can output, so having temps wich are much higher then load is crazy.

No. You made that up.
'Load' means 'working', not '100% working'. Nowhere in the world does the dictionary say that 'load' equals '100% load'.
Different tests will create different loads.

Well, I've explained it to you alot of times now Track, I'm done.
You have a choice to make, you can believe one of three things:

1. I'm telling the truth
2. I'm Lying
3. I'm Incompetent

I'm telling you the answer is #1, but if you choose not to believe me that's fine, it's your perogative and I really don't care what you believe anymore. I tried my best to convince you and that's all I can do.

All I can say is, do more research and look at more benchmarks from others... pay attention if they bothered to push the fans to 100%, remember that not all stock fans are created equal, and pay attention to how they stress test the cores... then make up your own mind.

Reply to Cleeve

Quote :

ont care abt the noise, 3 dB more isnt a problem with me used to 500 dB.

500DB? 500DB will pulverize rock.

Reply to sruane

Quote :

Once a review says load then thats around the max the GPU can output, so having temps wich are much higher then load is crazy.

No. You made that up.
'Load' means 'working', not '100% working'. Nowhere in the world does the dictionary say that 'load' equals '100% load'.
Different tests will create different loads.

I really dont care abt u enough to having an opinion abt the way u behave, for good and bad. Im just trying to understand this.

Your saying that u pushed the card so far beyond what anyone on earth has, that it reached 30C more? and ur saying that the tougher the benchmark is, the higher the temps will be? Makes sence, but every card has a limit, and ive never seen it above 65C.

Can u run 3DMark06 and tell me the temps? One card will do.

Edit: 90C WITHOUT an overclock ??? at 750Mhz will it get to 150C? wtf.

Reply to Track

Quote :

ont care abt the noise, 3 dB more isnt a problem with me used to 500 dB.

500DB? 500DB will pulverize rock.

Yeah I found that interesting too. I tried to find some noise sources corresponding to the dB levels and came across this

http://www.800nonoise.com/tutorial_noiselist.htm

Don't know how reliable the site is but the funny thing is "Threshold of Pain" is at 140dB

Reply to BigRat

No, I don't like your attitude. You know my results and I've explained things to you over and over, if you choose not to believe them you can find it out on your lonesome.

All the answers are in this thread. I'm not wasting time explaining things to you again if you don't believe it anyway.

Search for yourself. Google is your friend. :twisted:

P.S. What is stopping you from running the stress tester on AtiTool for ten minutes to see what temperature you get on your card?
Put your money where your mouth is.

Reply to Cleeve

Track theres is absolutely no need to be a jacka$$ trying to prove someone wrong is one thing, but to be a sarcastic jerk is another. This is not what the forums are for, grow up and act like a man and not an immature kid. He made the review to benefit everyone and to help others, if you have a problem with his methods of experimentation then disregard it. In my opinion its a very valuable piece of information on a subject you cant get enough information about... nobody is trying to state scientific facts here its all trial and error and pure experimentation, thats what being a modder is all about. The only thing you should be doing is thanking the guy and giving constructive criticism backed up with data of your own, were all enthusists with the same goals and interests.

Reply to BrockSampson

Quote :

http://www.800nonoise.com/tutorial_noiselist.htm

Don't know how reliable the site is but the funny thing is "Threshold of Pain" is at 140dB

Sorry for the OT guys but isn't this even more funny?

[code:1:6d80c5d860]average factory 85 dB 8 hours[/code:1:6d80c5d860]

How come that you can stand the full shift of 8 hours at the factory without damaging your ears? That looks a bit fishy to me... it must be a conspiracy. They wrote 8 hours so you don't demand shorter shifts.

By the way, last bit of info is incorrect. 3dB more is 2x the sound level.

Reply to levicki

oh you mean the 5dB thing? Yeah you're right. Not that reliable it seems :?

Reply to BigRat

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