Zalman GV1000 Quad Heatpipe Extreme Gaming Video Card Cooler

Zalman GV1000 Quad Heatpipe Extreme Gaming Video Card Cooler

Innovative design

Zalman’s new 1000-series VGA coolers are without a doubt their best yet. The GV1000 and VF1000-LED boast many features which could possibly make them the best graphics card coolers ever to grace our website. As you can see, these coolers benefit from a unique and striking design. The surface area of their heatsinks has been maximized without compromising compatibility with either the video card itself, or the components around it.

The 1000-series heatsinks use four heatpipes to transfer the heat from the GPU directly to the fins. Because the fins are incredibly thin (just 0.3mm), their ability to dissipate heat has to be seen to be believed. Using one of these coolers instead of the cooler your graphics card came with will significantly reduce your card’s running temperature and increase its reliability, longevity and (if desired) overclockability.

Zalman GV1000.

Zalman VF1000-LED.

Both products come with eight RAM heatsinks which can be attached to the memory chips on your graphics card, ensuring that they are cooled adequately. These are not needed when fitting the product to an nVidia GeForce 8800 series card, but a ZM-RHS88 heatsink should be purchased instead (see below). The GV1000 and VF1000-LED both come with a handy FANMATE2 variable fan speed controller, giving you total control over the balance of noise versus cooling. But we have found that even with their fans set to the lowest speed, the 1000-series Zalman coolers are easily capable of cooling all compatible graphics cards currently on the market.

Product differences

There are slight differences between the GV and VF versions of this product because the GV1000 is designed for extreme performance enthusiasts such as gamers who wish to maximize cooling ability. It sports nickel-plated copper fins so they will not tarnish over time, and it comes with a slightly faster fan. Although this translates into a marginally higher level of running noise at a given FANMATE2 setting, it also means that cooling performance is improved.

The fan on the GV1000 glows red when in operation, and on the VF1000-LED it glows blue. So if you want best cooling, choose the GV1000. If you want the lowest noise, choose the VF1000-LED. But remember that both products excel in both areas in comparison to virtually any other product out there - it’s just that each one has a slightly different design emphasis.

Compatibility

The GV1000 and VF1000-LED are compatible with virtually all video cards which have original heatsink mounting holes around their GPU. However, they are not compatible with any Matrox card, ATI’s Radeon 9550/9600, nVidia’s PCX 5 series, GeForce 7800GS and 6600AGP series.

To provide compatibility with nVidia’s flagship 8800 series cards, Zalman have designed a RAM heatsink which cools the memory, FETs and I/O chipsets found on the 8800 series. The ZM-RHS88 is available separately and is designed specifically as a supplementary product to the GV1000 and VF1000-LED to enable GeForce 8800 compatibility. It is not compatible with any other VGA cooler.

ZM-RHS88 Compatible with nVidia 8800 series only.

PLEASE NOTE: The ZM-RHS88 is only compatible with 8800 GTS 320MB and 640MB cards. The new 512MB version is not supported.

Specifications

	GV1000	VF1000-LED	ZM-RHS88
Weight	390 g	380 g	80 g
Fan Speed	1650-3600 RPM	1400-2500 RPM	-
Noise Level	20-36 dBA	18-24 dBA	-
LED colour	Red	Blue	-
Material	Nickel-plated copper	Copper	Aluminum
Dimensions, mm (L x W x H)	160 x 100 x 30		190 x 98 x 11
Fan Dimensions	80 x 80 x 15 mm		-
Bearing Type	2 Ball Bearing		-
RAM heatsinks included	Yes, qty 8		-