Coolink GFXChilla Video Card Cooler Review

Page 3 - Attaching and testing GFXChilla

Following the manual everything felt easy. But while attaching the aluminum radiators we ran into nasty problem - they either were not attaching or fell right off. And, yes, the chips were clean from any thermal paste residue from the stock cooler. With solvent even. The magic glue was the helper in this case. A miniature drop on the corner of each chip was sufficient enough for providing good attaching with minimal to none heat transference loss .

It was clear that Coolink's GFXChilla would be much more effective than the stock cooler. Actually the reason to choose precisely 8800GT for the tests was that it's still one of the most popular ones, while having a crappy stock cooler. Not only he is obscurely noisy, he is immensely ineffective. Sure in the winter the card was fine - he kept it at 50-60%, at 17-18 degrees room temperature, but now in the summer, when after a long July day the room temperature is way past 30 degrees an between 15-19 at night, the cooler was buzzing at 80%, which is VERY noisy, and the card is on the edge of overheating after a mere 15 of gaming.

For the tests we used the following hardware (the components that affected the results most are underlined):

• Albatron 8800GT 512MB (referent design and NVIDIA cooler)
• Cooler Master Mystique 631 Case
• Asus P5K-E WiFi P35
• Intel Core 2 E4500 @ 3.2GHz 8x400
• A-Data DDR800 @ 1000MHz 12-5-5-5
• GlacialPower AL 650W PSU

And there are the results at last. We must point out that the temperatures that you see are TEMPERATURES ABOVE THE ROOM TEMPERATURE. This way the values are most precise, and the ambient influence is avoided, so its easier for you to figure out what to expect at your room temperature with this cooler. We used very precise digital thermometer for acquiring the room temperature values.

The difference is mildly put shocking. Over 25 degrees difference in favor of the noiseless Coolink GFXChilla compared to the unbearably roaring stock cooler of the 8800GT. But honestly speaking the difference wasn't that much of a surprise, yet still speaks about two things. First of all, how many videocard manufacturers overlook the coolers of their cards and second, that for modest amount of cash you can obtain an effective and quiet cooler. This way overclock maniacs can safely squeeze those elusive few percent of performance from their card. Indeed GFChilla is a bright example.