Finally onto the good stuff. So what are the specs? The fan sports about 5000 revolutions a minute and an airflow of 5.14 cubic feet a minute. That airflow should be more than adequate for all video cards. We get to find out how well this thing performs in the grind. When push comes to shove we will see who is left standing. The first and foremost thing that must occur before anything else can happen, installation.

Installation was easy as I just took the video card out of its slot and popped off the heatsink with a butter knife. It is recommend you wait a few hrs. before you take the heatsink off so you will have a cool video card and a less likely chance that the chipset will have glue stuck on it. The Cooler comes with a 3pin motherboard connector for power and rpm monitoring. This is useful if you want to check how close the fan’s rpm comes to the manufacturers claim. This particular one has a fan with a heatsink on top of it for maximum cooling effect. After I installed it I booted up the computer with the case off to make sure the fan worked. The fan appeared to be running when I looked at it. Does it cool the video card better than the factory heatsink? Yes, of course it does. You should expect all video card coolers that void the warranty and cost money to cool the video card better. How much better does it cool the video card? About 7-10 degrees cooler in average tests after running video card intensive programs. My video card won’t overclock so I can’t test how well the cooler performs in this area.

If you have a video card chances are that it will increase the amount you can overclock your video card by 10%. I make no assured gain of any performance as every system and video card is and will respond differently. Noise wasn’t a factor. Its kinda hard to hear a tiny fan blowing with the case on. This thing is doing everything right so far. The next and final factor before the ratings is Durability. This thing can run for a 36,000 Mean Time Before Failure so you can expect it to last about 4yrs. Or they will give you a brand new one. This is a pretty durable video card cooler. I am giving it a 9 for price because $9.75 (plus shipping) is a great price to pay for this thing, but as always it could have been a little lower. For Performance its getting a 9 because it easily kept my video card cooler and would have enhance my overclocking ability. Overall its getting an 8.5 because while being a great product I felt that I should have decreased the temperature a little more. But then again for $9.75 this cooler is no slouch. If you need a cooler video card, head on over to 2cooltek and pick up a Global Win FA420 Graphics Chipset Cooler. There may be better ones out there, but not for $9.75!

by Kevin Perko

Price - 9 Performance - 8.5 Overall - 8.5

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