I just had the opportunity to mount these two fanless heatpipe VGA coolers on the same video card, running in the same system, within just a few weeks of each other. Since this happened mostly by accident I didn't plan a review, so I have no exact temperature measurements, nor any pictures, but I'll try to give you my take on them anyway:
Technical solution:
In broad terms, the two solutions are for the most part identical: Two big heatsinks, the largest attached to the GPU, and the smallest attached to the back of the card and connected to the front heatsink by heat pipes. There are small differences in the details (the Zalman has the heatpipes bending around the short end of the card, while the Schooner has them bending around the long side, etc) - but the only major difference is the Schooner's addition of another set of heatpipes leading out the neighboring PCI bracket to a set of copper fins. This is why I opted for the Schooner the second time around - assuming all other things are equal, this additional feature should mean better cooling performance and less heat to evacuate from the case with noisy fans.
Mounting process:
This is the only big disadvantage of these heatpipe coolers. They are made to fit many different card models, which unavoidably leads to a more difficult mounting process. I thought the Zalman was complicated, but the Schooner is significantly worse. The clips used to fasten the Schooner heatsinks onto the card make for an extremely flexible (I believe it will literally fit every card produced in the past few years) yet incredibly fiddly solution. The downside to the Zalman was that I had to buy a separate hard-to-find mounting kit in order to make it fit my 7800GT.
I could have forgiven the Schooner if the only reason for the mounting difficulties had been the tradeoffs needed to let it fit all sorts of cards, but the sad fact is there are many difficulties that are just completely unnecessary: The screws are incredibly tiny, their holes often buried deep between heatsink fins, and there are way too many layers and surfaces that need thermal compound, including areas that aren't well covered when the whole cooler is put together, which means accidentally touching your video card after assembly could get you full of silvery smudges.
So in the ease-of-assembly department, the Zalman wins hands down, even though prior to this it was easily the most complicated piece of equipment I ever put together. It's a necessarily complicated yet very clean and well-designed solution, with high build quality.
Cooling performance:
I have no exact measurements, but I can tell you that there was very little difference in the performance of these two coolers. The Schooner ran a few degrees hotter at full load, but also seemed to evacuate enough heat through the external fins to let the CPU run a degree or two cooler at the same load. They are both good enough to cool a 7800GT (don't mistake that for a GTX, the GT runs much cooler) passively in a case with relatively low airflow.
Conclusion:
I would definitely recommend the Zalman in pretty much any situation I can imagine. The tiny difference in CPU/general case temperature with the Schooner, achieved by radiating heat through the external fins, isn't enough to justify the nightmare of assembling it, especially since the GPU actually runs hotter than with the Zalman.
EDIT: One thing I should mention is that unless you have a dedicated fan blowing directly onto the area, there will obviously be very little airflow over the other components on the card. I actually had a card with a Zalman die on me, probably due to physical damage, but possibly related to RAM overheating. What worried me greatly about the Schooner was the lack of any sort of RAM cooling, so I bought a separate set of ramsinks from Zalman, along with some Arctic Silver thermal adhesive to attach them. I don't think I'd consider running the Schooner with as high-end a card as the 7800GT without additional RAM cooling. (The Zalman comes with a set of ramsinks included; I do recommend AS thermal adhesive instead of the default thermal tape though.)
EDIT 2: The Zalman product I'm talking about is the ZM80D-HP, not the ZM80A-HP.
Mini-review: Zalman ZM80D-HP vs. Thermaltake Schooner
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Mini-review: Zalman ZM80D-HP vs. Thermaltake Schooner
Last edited by JonV on Sat Sep 17, 2005 6:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
Nice review JonV. 
May i just add that the schooner is definately not recommened if one intends on moving the case around. A knock to the rear fins on the schooner could damage both the gfx card and the motherboard.
Also in my part of the world the schooner is quite a bit more expensive than the zalman cooler.
How's about some pics?
May i just add that the schooner is definately not recommened if one intends on moving the case around. A knock to the rear fins on the schooner could damage both the gfx card and the motherboard.
Also in my part of the world the schooner is quite a bit more expensive than the zalman cooler.
How's about some pics?
)The advantage of the Schooner is that with a GF6800GT and stock heatsink (I got a Inno3d GF6800GT) you can keep the original ramsinks. Remember to reseat them with arctic silver though as my one came with no thermal paste on half the RAM!
It's a bit of a nightmare to fit too: The trick is to do a dry build to the point pictured below before tightening the heatsink alignment. I had to invert one of the screws too to clear the card components on the rear of the card.
Once you've done that it's a case of building each layer up with arctic silver and it should all go together smoothly.
It's a bit of a nightmare to fit too: The trick is to do a dry build to the point pictured below before tightening the heatsink alignment. I had to invert one of the screws too to clear the card components on the rear of the card.
Once you've done that it's a case of building each layer up with arctic silver and it should all go together smoothly.
I brought a Schooner and here are more comments.
I chose it over other makes such as the Zalman because of the heatpipe drawing heat outside the case, my desire to passively cool my graphic card & to remove a fan to reduce noise. Also the Zalman recommends using an optional fan for my graphics card which would be an added cost and it would have ended more expensive than the Schooner.
My graphics isn’t high end. It’s a MSI FX5900XT and was mid-range when I brought approximately 2 years ago. My primary aim was to reduce noise and provide good cooling without resorting to a fan. I think fan based solutions just blow hot air around the case when I wanted to extract it outside the case, if possible.
Installation went fine. I didn’t find it all that fiddly. But the last step to attach the heatpipe to the black sink was a disaster. The heatpipe is attached using 2 brackets which are screwed into the black heat sink but the screws are *too small*. They fit inside the mounting holes and don’t make contact with the ‘thread’. I brought extra 2mm and 3mm screws and they are too small and too large respectively. It looks like the screws need to be 2.5mm.
I my opinion that’s bad quality control on Thermaltake’s behalf.
At the moment, I using it without the heatpipe and it’s appears to be working OK. It’s warm, not hot, to touch but I am disappointed in this basic mistake.
I chose it over other makes such as the Zalman because of the heatpipe drawing heat outside the case, my desire to passively cool my graphic card & to remove a fan to reduce noise. Also the Zalman recommends using an optional fan for my graphics card which would be an added cost and it would have ended more expensive than the Schooner.
My graphics isn’t high end. It’s a MSI FX5900XT and was mid-range when I brought approximately 2 years ago. My primary aim was to reduce noise and provide good cooling without resorting to a fan. I think fan based solutions just blow hot air around the case when I wanted to extract it outside the case, if possible.
Installation went fine. I didn’t find it all that fiddly. But the last step to attach the heatpipe to the black sink was a disaster. The heatpipe is attached using 2 brackets which are screwed into the black heat sink but the screws are *too small*. They fit inside the mounting holes and don’t make contact with the ‘thread’. I brought extra 2mm and 3mm screws and they are too small and too large respectively. It looks like the screws need to be 2.5mm.
I my opinion that’s bad quality control on Thermaltake’s behalf.
At the moment, I using it without the heatpipe and it’s appears to be working OK. It’s warm, not hot, to touch but I am disappointed in this basic mistake.
I brought a Schooner and here are more comments.
I chose it over other makes such as the Zalman because of the heatpipe drawing heat outside the case, my desire to passively cool my graphic card & to remove a fan to reduce noise. Also the Zalman recommends using an optional fan for my graphics card which would be an added cost and it would have ended more expensive than the Schooner.
My graphics card isn’t high end. It’s a MSI FX5900XT and was mid-range when I brought approximately 2 years ago. My primary aim was to reduce noise and provide good cooling without resorting to a fan. I think fan based solutions just blow hot air around the case when I wanted to extract it outside the case, if possible.
Installation went fine. I didn’t find it all that fiddly. But the last step to attach the heatpipe to the black sink was a disaster. The heatpipe is attached using 2 brackets which are screwed into the black heat sink but the screws are *too small*. They fit inside the mounting holes and don’t make contact with the ‘thread’. I brought extra 2mm and 3mm screws and they are too small and too large respectively. It looks like the screws need to be 2.5mm.
I my opinion that’s bad quality control on Thermaltake’s behalf.
At the moment, I using it without the heatpipe and it’s appears to be working OK. It’s warm, not hot, to touch but I am disappointed in this basic mistake.
I chose it over other makes such as the Zalman because of the heatpipe drawing heat outside the case, my desire to passively cool my graphic card & to remove a fan to reduce noise. Also the Zalman recommends using an optional fan for my graphics card which would be an added cost and it would have ended more expensive than the Schooner.
My graphics card isn’t high end. It’s a MSI FX5900XT and was mid-range when I brought approximately 2 years ago. My primary aim was to reduce noise and provide good cooling without resorting to a fan. I think fan based solutions just blow hot air around the case when I wanted to extract it outside the case, if possible.
Installation went fine. I didn’t find it all that fiddly. But the last step to attach the heatpipe to the black sink was a disaster. The heatpipe is attached using 2 brackets which are screwed into the black heat sink but the screws are *too small*. They fit inside the mounting holes and don’t make contact with the ‘thread’. I brought extra 2mm and 3mm screws and they are too small and too large respectively. It looks like the screws need to be 2.5mm.
I my opinion that’s bad quality control on Thermaltake’s behalf.
At the moment, I using it without the heatpipe and it’s appears to be working OK. It’s warm, not hot, to touch but I am disappointed in this basic mistake.
I really should have added that the Thermaltake Schooner only lasted 20-30 minutes before black screening on the GF6800GT card.
This may have been due to shorting on the back of the card where it was a very tight fit between the components and the heatsink baseplate. It's got a plastic cover across it but there were dents in the baseplate where it was pushed against the card.
The temperatures seemed ok according to the Nvidia temeprature monitor.
After refitting it 3 times I replaced it with a Zalman ZM80D-HP with Antec Tri-cool 80mm fan blowing onto it at 7v
Lian-Li PC60 case (80mm exhaust XP3800+ x2, idle 37c)
Idle temps for the GF6800GT using a Zalman ZM80D-HP (with fan) are 60c idle going up to 78c approx after several hours under load.
The Zalman was a lot easier to fit too!
This may have been due to shorting on the back of the card where it was a very tight fit between the components and the heatsink baseplate. It's got a plastic cover across it but there were dents in the baseplate where it was pushed against the card.
The temperatures seemed ok according to the Nvidia temeprature monitor.
After refitting it 3 times I replaced it with a Zalman ZM80D-HP with Antec Tri-cool 80mm fan blowing onto it at 7v
Lian-Li PC60 case (80mm exhaust XP3800+ x2, idle 37c)
Idle temps for the GF6800GT using a Zalman ZM80D-HP (with fan) are 60c idle going up to 78c approx after several hours under load.
The Zalman was a lot easier to fit too!