My experience with HR-03 on a ATI X850 Pro : Impressive !

[Blacktales]

Hello All !

I've just installed a HR-03 heatsink in an attempt to silence a bit more my computer and replace my better-than-stock Zalman VF700. It seems to be so good i want to share my experience and have a few questions.

Background :
When i received my X850 Pro, the temperatures were quite dreadful :
65 idle / 85 load (in winter)
mostly due to an amazingly bad thermal paste application.

To improve the cooling and noise levels, all i could quickly find in the area was a Zalman VF700, which improved thing quite a bit :
35 / 55 during winter
42 / 60 during summer.

I then stumbled on this website and like so many others developed an allergy to noise and have since begun my journey to silencing my build. After silencing my HD, replacing a few noisy fans and installing a ninja, the biggest noisemaker in my computer was the VF700. I didn't want to run it at 5v because i would not go on higher temperatures for fear of getting problems when overclocking during games and for the sake of silencing the computer even more.

So i purchased the HR-03 for 40 bucks and installed it now two hours ago. I let the zalman memory heatsinks in place excepted the two in the way of the heatpipes when installing under the card replaced with lower profile heatsinks provided with the HR-03. I mounted the thing using Arctic Cooling MX-1 TIM spread on the chip (which is supposed to cure and achieve a few degrees drop after 200h) and i rotated the heatsink at bit back and forth when turning the screws to be sure the layer of paste would spread thin enough.

I didn't use the included TIM because when i tried it on, the paste seemed not homogeneous and not thick enough kinda like over-diluted-with-water ceramique TIM. i don't know what kind of paste it was or how good it is supposed to be but I've been using MX-1 quite often during the last few months and it is usually very good.

It's blazing hot summer so i cannot say anything about temperatures in six months and/or after the MX-1 cures but they are already lower than in summer using the zalman :
38 idle and an amazing 46 on load
using a Papst Multifan 4412 (only 92mm fan i had around except a Tricool) at 5v which is surprisingly quiet though i have no idea about the airflow level.

If i run it at 12v the temperatures seem to drop to 35/42 but then the box sound like a vacuum cleaner. So i'm gonna keep on running at 5v which is more than enough to cool efficiently now. I can't wait to see the temperatures in winter when the ambient drops 10 degrees. I also touched the heatpipes to verify everything worked and the four of them seemed really hot after a 20mn load session so it seems everything is all right.

Edit : The weather cooled down today and it seems the temperature of the card at idle is always ambient + 8. So in winter it should happily idle around 26-28 !

All in all, an amazing heatsink and actually cheaper than the VF700 i purchased a few months ago. I would recommend it to anyone !


I only have a few questions now :

Even if the core temperature is much lower that before, it seems the airflow over the memory heatsink is reduced for the difference in temperature with the core is much lower than before ?
- Is this a problem ?
- If it is, is it caused by a reduced airflow compared to the "flower" shape of the VF700 ? Or could the fact that one heatpipe seems to touch one memory chip could cause it reporting this temperature ?
- Is there a way to improve this save improving airflow with a side fan ? Even pushing the fan to 12v do not seem to reduce the delta between core and memory. Would changing the old zalman memory heatsinks for the new one on the whole card change anything about this ?

As for the fan :
- Is there a simple and not too dirty way of attaching a 120mm fan ? Maybe zipties ?
- What model is usually preferred ?
- If not, what is a good silent 92mm that can stand horizontal orientation and has a good airflow/noise ratio and is readily available in canada or online ? Maybe a DBB YateLoon ?

Thanks IA

Blacktales

[cmthomson]

I only have a few questions now :

Even if the core temperature is much lower that before, it seems the airflow over the memory heatsink is reduced for the difference in temperature with the core is much lower than before ?
- Is this a problem ?
- If it is, is it caused by a reduced airflow compared to the "flower" shape of the VF700 ? Or could the fact that one heatpipe seems to touch one memory chip could cause it reporting this temperature ?
- Is there a way to improve this save improving airflow with a side fan ? Even pushing the fan to 12v do not seem to reduce the delta between core and memory. Would changing the old zalman memory heatsinks for the new one on the whole card change anything about this ?

As for the fan :
- Is there a simple and not too dirty way of attaching a 120mm fan ? Maybe zipties ?
- What model is usually preferred ?
- If not, what is a good silent 92mm that can stand horizontal orientation and has a good airflow/noise ratio and is readily available in canada or online ? Maybe a DBB YateLoon ?

Thanks IA

Blacktales

GDDR3 memory does not heat up and does not need heat sinks. The natural conduction through the board keeps the memory cool. But since the heat sinks are already installed, there's no need to remove them either.

A couple of cable ties in series work quite well to mount fans onto this kind of heat sink. Your cooling needs are very modest with this card/HS. You can use either a 92 or 120 mm fan undervolted to 5V quite effectively. Nexus/Yate Loon are highly regarded in both sizes.

[turkishharem]

Thanks for the installation narrative and results. I'm in the market for a quiet heatsink for my 7900GS and am contemplating the HR-03. Thanks for posting your experience with it versus the Zalman.

[pyogenes]

As for the fan :
- Is there a simple and not too dirty way of attaching a 120mm fan ? Maybe zipties ?

I have my hr-03 positioned so it's below my video card. I used some thread to loosely suspend a 120mm Yate Loon below the heatsink and video card. No vibrations to be transmited to the rest of the computer that way. The set up uses up quite a few slots but I'm not using them anyway.