I bought this because I was getting artifact problems with my new ATI HD3850, and figured I should get a new cooler. I did some research and the
Thermalright HR-03 VGA Heatpipe seemed to have all the best reviews, so i went out and bought one.
£23.56 Inc VAT.
It is designed so it can be used fanless or with a 92mm fan. This is probably a good thing, because later research found there are ways of modding it to fit a 120mm fan, which I'd rather do. The shop didnt have any 92mm fans in stock so i tried without it. Before fitting it, i did a quick benchmark test with the stock cooler. It idled at 41 degrees, and to test it under load I hit the ATI overdrive auto tune button and watched it rise to 50C.
I then shut down the pc and proceeded to remove the stock cooler. Fitting the HR-03 was quite a fiddly process. theres reports of it being easy to install, which I guess in theory it could have been, if I had the fingers of a 5yr old girl.
The first step is to add the RAMsinks. it's vitally important to clean the RAM first, because of the grease left over from the previous cooler, which you wont notice until you look at the cloth afterwards. Leaving this grease on will cause the RAMsinks to drop off. Theres 2 sizes of sinks, tall, and short, for the pipes to go over. either way, they both have the same surface contact size and shape of the memory, which didnt help since there was a noticable overlap of memory exposed to the air and not being covered by the sinks.
then came the tricky part, fitting the main cooler. It's one of those jobs you wish you had 3 hands for, but if you called a friend to help, you'd find too many arms in the way of each other. As i found a way of juggling the card and cooler and other pieces between my hands and feet, I slide the cooler on. I could feel the heatsink grinding against a ramsink, surely it was causing a hideous scratch, which I knew would be bad knews as I scratched a CPU heatsink in the past and it ruined its cooling ability. This consequently dislodged the ramsink, so i had to poke at it for a while between the heatpipes with my tiniest screwdriver to nudge it back into place.
As the cooler moved over the GPU I was hoping to be able to move it over and drop it into place, but the fit was so tight i was forced to rub it against the GPU, knowing it was smeering away the thermal paste I applied (OCZ thermal paste BTW).
As I screwed it all in place, I had a bad feeling I was going to have to take it off and start again, but i decided to try it first.
After boot up, the temperature read 32C, considerable improvement, but I figured I should let it warm up some more first, so i fired up AudioSurf, not wanting to stress the card too much incase the cooler wasn't up to scratch. 30 mins later, the reading was still 32C, so I hit the Overdrive Auto Tune, the temperature still didnt budge. Now I was worried I'd damaged the thermometer, and that the card may be overheatign and I coudlnt possibly know.
Later that night i risked playing CS:S (on highest graphics settings), and didnt notice a single artifact, so i guessed the cooler was working. Finishing 3 hours later (by now the flat's heating had come on), I decided to give the thermometer another try, and it read 36C!!
So I concluded that the thermometer is infact working, and not only that, but the cooler was doign a dam sight better than the stock cooler, while being fanless, I couldnt believe it, and today, I STILL can't get over it. So, for anyone wanting a new GPU cooler, the HR-03 fits just about any graphics card, ATI or NV. It's a bugger to install, but well worth it. It fits snuggly so you can use with with SLI/Crossfire, that said, you probably wont have space for a fan in between. You can apply the heatsink to either side of the card depending on which side has the most space to fit a fan on, but then you'll find you might not have space for CPU cooling. Fortunately for me, my Antec-900 gaming case has a mount for a fan on the side blowing directly onto both cards, but I cant use it because the cooler infringes in the space the fan would occupy, but theres also the mounting for the fan to go inside the case between the HDD's and the cards, which i may find myself using, but chances are probably not. I can get such low unbelievable temperatures whichest being fanless, I'll probably keep it like that.
there we have it.
the Thermalright HR-03 VGA Heatpipe Cooler.
i recommend to all.
PS: looking now, the card currently reads 27C
