Sytrin's KuFormula VF1 Plus
Sytrin's Kuformula VF1 Plus
Best price found: $36.99
Another newcomer, but a well-reviewed product. The KuFormula VF1 Plus performed excellently in our last review, but how will it fare compared to all the other offerings?
The Hardware
The VF1 Plus sports a large copper cooling block with heat pipes that support a copper radiator. The cooler is a bit unique in that the airflow is designed to move over the card from top to bottom, not across it as with the other coolers. This is coupled with a very powerful cross-flow ('squirrel cage') fan held by a bracket apart from the cooler, which uses a slot in the PC case to support it. This bracket also carries the 3-speed fan control. In addition, the VF1 Plus comes with heat sinks to cool the memory packages.
Sytrin's KuFormula VF1 Plus package
Installation
The memory heat sinks are simple to apply, and the cooler portion of the VF1 Plus is relatively simple to install. It comes with three sizes of interchangeable metal brackets that can be used to allow the cooler to fit various video cards. The cooler used to come with convex screws that would interfere in the installation of certain cards like the Radeon X1800/X1900 series, but Sytrin has since corrected this problem by including countersunk screws that work fine with all cards.
An issue remains with the bracket that holds the fan, however: it is a single, non-adjustable size, and certain cards (like the X1800/X1900 series) are not compatible with it. With a little modification, the fan can be mounted in an acceptable position to move air across the heat sink, although probably not quite ideally. As such, it may be at a bit of a disadvantage compared to an installation on a VGA card that it fit perfectly.
Power was attached to a standard Molex connecter off of the power supply, easy to accommodate and effective.
