Question about thermalright HR-03 GT

mnekic · Post by **mnekic** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:40 pm

I own an ASUS M3A32MVP deluxe motherboard like the one shown below, and currently own an ATI Radeon HD 3870. I would like to purchase another so i can use them in a crossfire setup. I find the fan too noisy and the temps are too hot for my liking, so i am looking to replace the stock cooler with a thermalright HR03GT.

but with this comes a few questions/problems...

1. will i be able to keep my PCI audio card?

2. How many slots does the HR03GT obstruct?

3. What is the longest available crossfire bridge interconnect cable available and where can i find one? (i need one so slightly longer than the ASUS one that came with my board)

this is what i was thinking, and it should work if the HR03GT takes up as many slots as i think it does, allowing me to keep my audio card, but i just need that longer cable...

here's my idea:

PCIE16_4 (bottom black slot): occupied by 3870, Thermalright HR03GT mounted in wrap around style, where heatsink is above the back of the card

so for a quick diagram, like this:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ <Thermalright
---------------------------------------- < ATi 3870

this takes up two slots, correct?

PCI16_1 (top blue slot): occupied by 3870, Thermalright HR03GT mounted in the "hanging style" where the heatsink would be below

quick diagram:

----------------------------------------- <ATi 3870
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ empty space between GPU and underside of heatsink
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ <Thermalright

this should take up 3 slots, is that correct?

If this setup worked, i would have 1 pci slot unobstructed for my audio card, however, i would need a long enough bridge cable, and can't for the life of me find one, any suggestions where i could, if it even exists?

thank you SPCR, any help is appreciated.

P.S., these cards will be somewhat passively cooled, if this setup works the heatsinks lie directly in the path of the inside duct fan in my p182

zorrt · Post by **zorrt** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:46 pm

The HR03GT takes up 2 adjacent slots (3 if you add a fan which you should as its not great for passive, try the accelero s1 if you wanna go that path). I believe the S1 takes as much space as the HR03 but works better than the HR03 passive.

If you do want to keep the HR03 you might try mountin the top one in reverse (heatsink on top) and if you have a top down CPU cooler it could help cool that down. And for the bottom on if space below allows you can have a fan on it or just reverse it also with a fan.

mnekic · Post by **mnekic** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:28 pm

thank you for the reply first of all

,

i'm sorry, but i am still somewhat confused, because of the term adjacent. is that adjacent including the video card (thereby taking up 2 slots total)?. by the looks of it, in the wrap around mount style, it appears to take up 2 slots.

when mounted on top of the gpu (heatsink facing down) it appears to take up 3 slots.

are my assumptions correct? i am judging by pictures in the general gallery, but its still somewhat difficult to actually tell.

also, because your experience is probably far better than mine i'll take your word for it when you say that the hr03gt does not cool well passively, however if i use the hard drive bay in my P182 as a duct, with an 800rpm noctua on the front, and 1200rpm noctua on the inside, would this not push enough air over and through the heatsink to cool it effectively? or should i be asking that in the fans and control forum?

again, thank you for your help, and sorry for my misunderstanding of your first reply.

zorrt · Post by **zorrt** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:48 am

Sorry my fault I didnt look at your diagram correctly but yea that should work, just don't take my word for it because I've never fitted the heatsink in reverse before. But judging by pictures it does look like it only overs up 1 slot above the video card.

Regarding the passive cooling of it, I only went by what everyone else said how the HR03 doesnt cool well passive compared to the S1. I do know that with a Nexus at the front of the P180 the HR03 doesn't fair well at all. Temps went up to 80degrees under load on my 8800gt before I plugged the fan back in.

Anyways for the sake of doing my own test with the HR03 I've set up my system to be as close as possible to how u intend on running it just to help you compare. But your setup will be giving off more heat due to the 2 cards.

Room temp, roughly 25 - 26 degrees. Idle temps were taken bout 10mins after turning on my comp. First on low fan setting, then on medium just to compare with the noctua you are using (website says its 47CFM at 1200rpm). Load temps were taken with 2 loops of crysis GPU benchmark which heats the card up more than ATITool does or any other games I have for that matter.

Tricool on low (39CFM?) - idle temp 49degrees, load temp 66
Tricool on medium (56CFM) - idle temp 44 degrees, load temp 59 degrees

Surprisingly the results isnt as bad as people made it sound like. But I guess they're comparing it to the cheaper S1 which can outperform it.

Well for comparison, HR03 GT with a Yate Loon mounted:

Idle @ 964rpm (40% under speedfan) - 42 degrees
Load @ 964rpm (40% under speedfan) - 54 degrees
Load @ 1555rpm (70% under speedfan) - 52 degrees

So I can only assume your setup should work fairly well with the noctua blowing on them. Not sure if you need the front noctua too tho. Anyways hope that helps clear up my previous comments.

mnekic · Post by **mnekic** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 7:07 am

yes it does clear up my questions !

thank you so much for taking the time and effort to setup your system that way, i really appreciate it !