ZALMAN VF3000A Enter VGA Cooler

Comment:
for my 5850. good style. cant hear it compared to the stock fan, which was horrid, stock fan was creating grinding sounds as if it was loose and uneven. so picked this up. Utilizing the FanMate2 on full. hardest part of installing was finding the baby screws off the board. cost was decent. its got blue leds!! ram heatsinks suck. wont stick with that tape that is attatched to them. maintain falling off. so im looking for an alternative atm. i took an Egg away mainly because of this. if Zalman sends me some new ones ill give the Egg back x2!! waiting to oc the card. but already see a huge difference in temps, idle and under full load. worth the price, cant see how this would brick the card if installed appropriately.

Comment:
Bought it a year ago, kept my 5870 cool the entire time.I replaced the stock cooler since I maintain my personal computer outside of a case, so I require my fans to be QUIET as I have no barrier between my ears and them. This did the trick perfectly.Keeping the fans at moderate speed, it is dead quiet, and the highest speed is still far quieter than the lowest stock fan speeds. And even at these low speeds, the temperature drop was exceptional, I dont bear in mind goign over 45 degrees on load testing, it was crazy!Did not brick my card, despite other reviews! And I believe I just utilised the thermal paste it came with. Comes with the vram heatsinks and so on. As some people today have mentioned, there have been issues where the fan begins to hit the red plate. Some people today said they RMAed it, which is silly.The red faceplate just detaches(without any tools!) and can be removed, and the fans are also utilizing a simple clamp setup to be attached to the heatsink. I found out you can just push the fan clamps back into spot (but i just kept off the red faceplate, no issues). I would have taken off an egg but I liked that the faceplate was so easy to remove by hand, without having the want of a screwdriver etc. I am buying a new 1 now for a new 5870 I am buying due to the fact I bricked my card... but I'm Fairly positive that was simply because I was playing with card-flashing inappropriately ;)

Comment:
The main block and fans attached to my HD5830 easily, but the longest heatsink could not fit at all so I had to keep the stock one. Also, the fan power harness on the Zalman does not fit the fan power socket on the card at all and I had to hook it up to my motherboard to get power to it.Overall, it does cool very well and makes less noise v100% fan speeds than the stock single fan v100%.

Comment:
It looks nice. High RPM and still quiet. Directions are uncomplicated to follow. Installation isn't complicated. "Adhesive" on the memory heat sinks is useless. Hope to heaven that you have a fan controller or such, simply because the cable isn't compatible with the four pin layout of the 5870 (thanks for not including an adapter, Zalman).The red casing can be removed and is extremely pointless unless you want to add size to an already big family of GPUs.Bring your own thermal paste to the party. My workstation is now a quite large and pricey paper weight until I get a new GPU because, for whatever reason, my computer does not even get past BIOS (I can't see it pop up on my network, permitting me to even Remote Desktop in and check about).Last time I get Zalman, which is unfortunate, since the CPU fan I have from them is absolutely brilliant.

Comment:
It looked fantastic and thought i would have a cooler running card. After putting it on my 5870 the card no longer posts and i am in the method of rmaing the card.

Comment:
This product is quiet on max and cools well. I had a slight issue installing 2 of these on my XFX HD5870's as they appeared to be slightly different than the design, so I ordered some zalman ram sinks in replacement for the one long sink included with the VF3000A. The one replacement kit was about 17 after shipping and came with 8, I only needed 4 per card, works fine. THey are the same sinks that are included witht he VF3000A already.

Comment:
This is definitely an amazing GPU cooler for the price. Currently running my XFX Radeon 5850, which is reference design, and had absolutely no issues installing it. Popped the top off the card, attached what needed to be attached, and popped the cooler on with a bit of the included thermal goo. Some people with non-reference cards may have issues with installation.Everything on this cooler was designed to look good, even with the blue LEDs. The red RAM-sinks and the shiny red casing around the heatsink itself gives it a very nice look in your case, regardless if you're the black and red guy. The cable, however, for the fan controller is black, red, and yellow. Yellow? I would have been happier if Zalman had included some form of a cable casing to make it look a bit more nice; a black wrapping or something. I'll get some pictures after I've fixed up some more of the cable management.I'm running my Radeon 5850 OCed at 950MHz core and 1100MHz memory. The core voltage is 1.24V and the card, at full load, only reaches 52-55 degrees celcius. The fans are set to around 1600RPM, with a maximum speed of 2900RPM. With my Scythe Kaze attached to my CPU cooler, I can't hear this thing at all; it's just a light drone in the background.Definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for great cooling, but doesn't want to move over to a liquid cooling solution.