Zalman VF3000F GTX 570/580 GPU Cooler Review

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] Compared to the GeForce GTX 480 that prefaced it, the GTX 580 became a card that proved NVIDIA's determination to make sure its cards don't overheat. While it took no effort to see the GTX 480 reach 95°C or higher, the GTX 580's improved power architecture made sure it never got much higher than 80°C. A major improvement if there ever was one. But while manageable, 80°C temps might not be ideal for those who have their PC in a room that's notoriously warm (*raises hand*), are using a small chassis, or can't stand the noticeable whine that can emit from a card like the GTX 580 during a gaming session. Again, where noise is concerned, NVIDIA improved the GTX 580 over the 480 quite a bit, but at full load, you'll easily hear it above every other component inside your PC. Somewhat surprisingly, there isn't a huge market for GPU coolers, and at one popular e-tailer, there's a mere 50 available (compared to the 200 or so CPU coolers), and of those, 15 belong to Zalman. It's clear that the company takes GPU cooling seriously, so we look forward to seeing what the VF3000F is capable of. Closer Look. Before diving in, I should mention that I took a look at a near-identical Zalman GPU cooler last fall. Dubbed the VF3000N, that cooler worked with older GeForce models, and required a lot more effort to install. There, the cooling performance was quite good, but as the GTX 580 could be even harder to cool, the results should be interesting. The most important thing to mention about the VF3000F will also be the first: triple slot. For those with smaller motherboards or lots of PCI/PCIe peripherals, a cooler of this form-factor is not going to be ideal for most. With my particular motherboard, I still managed to have a PCIe NIC and audio card installed and still have one slot free, but not all motherboards are going to be quite as forgiving, so please do your research before committing to a cooler of this size. The first thing that may catch your eye with this cooler is its color, which while green, doesn't quite align itself to the NVIDIA green that it could be trying to mock. Most people I've spoken with don't like this shade, but I don't have much of a problem with it - though I would have preferred something even darker. Nonetheless, the cooler features a multitude of fins along with five long copper heatpipes and an ultra-smooth base - one of the smoothest I've seen on a cooler in some time. While taking photos of the cooler, I somehow forgot to take a photo of it without its shroud, but from what I can see, it's identical to the one found with the VF3000N, so this photo should suffice. Here's a close-up of the base, however, which I managed to smudge just a little bit before taking the photo (it's harder than you'd imagine to avoid this!): Compared to the VF3000N, the number of install components found with this cooler is minimal. With that cooler, each memory chip needed its own small heatsink, while here, Zalman has included a large block that makes things so much easier. Don't believe me? Take a look at this photo of the VF3000N's components and you will. The goal of most coolers is to deliver as good performance as possible while retaining reasonable audio levels, and the VF3000F is no different. With its dual-92mm fans, huge number of fins, thick heatpipes and super-smooth base, this cooler could well prove to be an excellent performer - and we'd hope so given its $75 USD price tag. With that said, let's move onto the installation and testing. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Installation and Testing][Top Ad] The first required step of installing any graphics card cooler is to uninstall the other one, and in this case, that cooler was reference. This is where, somewhat hilariously, we ran into our first roadblock, but it's far from being the fault of Zalman. For some reason, even though both of our GTX 580 cards came straight from NVIDIA, the cooler on one card was secured using six-side star screws that I've never seen before. I had to use the smallest Allen wrench (hex key) I own to unscrew them, and this is where the roadblock hit me hard. While I managed to get half of the screws undone no problem, the others refused to come out, as if they were stripped. This totally ruined our chances of installing this cooler on that card, so I implore anyone who plans to buy this or another third-party cooler to make sure first that they'll even be able to get the stock cooler off. This was the first time I ever encountered this problem, and I'm hoping it'll be the last. Our second GTX 580 thankfully had regular screws so we were able to remove the reference cooler without an issue. Once the card is clean, each one of the memory chips (12 in total) and mini MOSFETs (22 in total) need to have thermal paste applied to them. If that sounds tedious, it's because it is. Zalman includes with the VF3000F a tube of its ZM-STG2 thermal paste, but like all thermal paste, it's difficult to push out onto small chips like these and spread out. On a big CPU, it's fine, but here, not so much. I'm afraid to admit that this is where I took a shortcut. After applying some thermal paste to the first memory chip, I realized that doing the rest was just going to be rife with tedium, due to how slow the paste comes out and how hard it is to apply neatly. Thus, I replaced the included thermal paste with Zalman's own STG1. Since first discovering it years ago, I haven't been able to let it go. It in essence allows you to apply the paste like nail polish (not that I understand this too well), and because its more of a liquid than other pastes, it both applies and removes easier than any other - it's truly unparalleled. That said, even with paste that's much easier to use, the mini MOSFETs area did end up a little messier than I had planned. Still, good coverage all-around. With the card itself prepped, the next step is to take the included large heatsink and apply 10 super-small 'rubber rings' to each one of the holes on the back, which are shown applied in the photo below. These are rubber on one side, sticky on the other, and require a steady hand to apply properly. These are used to reduce vibration between the cooler and the card. Prior to affixing the heatsink to the card, 10 PET washers need to be applied to the back of it, one over each of the holes that corresponds with the holes on back of the heatsink. You will be able to easily tell the appropriate locations, or simply look at the photo below to see where they are meant to be applied. Once done, you can place the heatsink on the card and use the included bolts to connect the two pieces together. At this point, here is where we stand: With the card where it is now, we're almost done. On the heatsink, nipple screws and rubber rings need to be attached to the heatsink base, as seen here: After, a fair amount of thermal paste is to be applied to the GPU. Rather than push a huge pile of the stuff to the center of the chip, I'd recommend creating a thin spiral shape, making sure that the entire surface will be covered once the cooler is put into place. You do not want to put too much, however, as the paste could leak out on either side, and could become a detriment to the overall performance. Before the heatsink is attached to the card, you will need to combine the included springs and fixing nuts together so that the spring's widest opening faces the card. Once that's done, you can combine the heatsink to the card and use these new fixing nut + spring combos to secure the pieces together. In case it's not obvious enough from that statement, it takes a mere 4 screws to remove the entire heatsink from the card. In the event that you want to replace the thermal paste, detaching the two segments is very, very easy. After the card is installed into your PC, the fan controller module will need to be connected. Installing this is simple, but one 3-pin motherboard header will be required (or a 3-pin to Molex connector adapter if one doesn't exist). While all of the performance testing was conducted with our GPU test PC, using a Cooler Master HAF X full-tower chassis, the card's home for the time-being is my personal PC, so I'm using it for the sake of photos to give an idea of what it looks like installed, replete with its fan controller module: "Domination" is a good term to use here, because when I look at this photo, all I can see is the VF3000F. If not for the fact that the motherboard I'm using includes a 1x PCIe slot at the top, I wouldn't have been able to use this card (or, my ASUS Xonar STX). Also, when using a cooler like this, SLI is going to be a tough deal to manage. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Test Results] To test the difference between the reference cooler (pictured in this article) and Zalman's VF3000F, I used a combination of GPU-Z 0.5.4 to record all of the temperatures, and Futuremark's 3DMark 11 at Extreme mode in a loop of 3 to push the card about as hard as it can be. Here are the specs of the test machine: Component Model Processor Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition - Quad-Core @ 4.05GHz - 1.40v Motherboard Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME - F13j BIOS (08/02/2010) Memory Corsair DOMINATOR - 12GB DDR3-1333 7-7-7-24-1T, 1.60v Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB Audio ASUS Xonar D2X Storage Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 Power Supply Corsair HX1000W Chassis Cooler Master HAF X Full-Tower Display Gateway XHD3000 30" Cooling Corsair H50 Self-Contained Liquid Cooler Et cetera Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Coolers of any sort can be a little sporadic with their effectiveness from one run to another, mostly depending on room temperature, so for the sake of added confidence in our results, each test was run a total of three times. Due to the equally sporadic nature of my city's weather, testing took about a week to complete as it was a rare occurrence when my non-temperature-controlled room became cool enough for testing. First up is a graph containing the best results...

Zalman VF3000F GTX 570/580 GPU Cooler Review

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Rob Williams