Insane Radeon 9800 Pro cooling

Now this is the most insane cooling job I've ever seen on a video card. You can imagine how heavy it is and how many PCI slots it is taking over.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20030726/image/nzh1.html

ok..thats ALOT of cooling
it looks to me like there is no fan in that atall - perhaps it was build for a totally silent machine? but then again - water cooled graphics cards are silent....
it might just be built for insane clock speeds

Steg

EDIT - *confesses complete stupidity* i didnt make the connection between the huge zalman fan and the graphics card! i thought it was part of the case it was displayed in....it still might be for silent or near silent running.....maybe...perhaps....or not

LOL. I was about to type back "it's right there man!" ;-)

About the pci issue... actually I think it's going to help cool down any other components you put in the 2 or 3 !!! first pci slots. the only problem you can encounter is if one of that cards is wider thean the radeon9800 card, then it won't fit with that big fan.

Well with the Zalman cooler that would be in the way of at least one PCI slot. I am guessing possibly two considering how large the heatsink is. The fan doesn't seem as though it would be in the way due to it being higher than the top of the video card, although you never know it may get in the way of something else in the case.

My biggest worry would be how heavy it is. The saphire atlantis 9800 ultra uses the same heatsink, but without the fan and it's quite heavy

That's overexagerated. Where are they thinking of taking it? To the sun? You can get better cooling with water cooling.

That isn't the point Xtr-X. Also water cooling is very expensive. Are you going to spend $400+ on a video card and water cool it which is very expensive? Or use a heatsink and fan with great results. Also if this is overkill then water killing is far beyond overkill.

Its a regular cooler, that even comes with vid.cards as said above. That person has slapped on a 80mm fan (screwed into the heatsink)..I dunno about the fan helping, but the retail heatsink does no better then the usual active air cooling.

This is mad though...what a massive cooler, I hope it really does its job well.

Yes it is, it is overexagerated. It's heavy as hell, takes up about 3 PCI slots or more! If you don't think that's overexagerated, why would anyone want to do something as insane as that? For props sure... but decent airflow in the case would replace that fan on the vid card.

Or where the heck are they? The tropics?

Actually that's just the new version of the Zalman Heatpipe VC cooler, it comes with the fan stock .

Yea as I said the fan isn't going to get in the way of any PCI cards, but the heatsink indeed will. If you guys notice the fan is on top of the video card therefore it wouldnt touch any other PCI cards because obviously the AGP card is no lower than PCI cards.

Actually, there are a few exceptions but that is true. The AGP card usually comes out more.

At least not for me, my Audigy 2 Plat comes out longer than my vid card in both directions. I always try to put video and sound next to eachother. They are one PCI slot seperated, to give the AGP room to breathe.

i've got 3 pci slots between my sound card and vid.card more room to breathe

generaly one is plenty, if at all possible make sure you do have that one spot though, most mobos share the first PCI and AGP slot, so if you use one, the other has issues, it may work, may not, may have issues, just something to watch for.


also, about the water cooling, if you are already spending $400 on a vid card, and have a h2o setup, it costs maybe $30-40 to add it (realy nice waterbock). and if you dont, well you can get a pretty decent kit for about $150 (www.cpufx.com is good for a starter)