Gigabyte "Flower" Heatpipe w/blower HSF

powergyoza · Post by **powergyoza** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 8:28 am

Okay, it's not exactly a flower like the CNPS 7000.

Saw a review at http://www.hardwarezone.com, but I wanted to look for a review that actually measured the noise. No such thing.

Model# Gigabyte GH-PCU21-VG aka 3D Cooler-Pro

Does anyone thinks it's worthy of a SPCR review?

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 9:17 am

Thanks for the link Powergoyza.
That review is at least better than nothing. They do at least compare cooling ability AND noise with a few other coolers.
They come to the conclusion that it beats the Cooler Master Aero 7+ and Thermaltake Volcano 7+ on both cooling and noise at the same time.
Unfortunately they do this at the "rather quiet fan speed of 3,500RPM".

I don't think many of us would call 3500 RPM quiet.
Comparing to my Panaflo 24VM1A @12V it does 1158 RPM.

It is designed to run with it's integrated fan, similar to Zalmans 7000A, so any SPCR review would have to test it in similar ways as the 7000A.
It has about 50 fins/discs packed in on about 6cm height. This is awfully tight IMHO. This tight fin spacing clearly indicate that it is clearly designed for high airflow. It still manages to beat the other coolers at 1800 RPM, but I suspect that it would drop considerably in performance if it was taken down to 1000 RPM.
However this shows that they have designed the cooler and fan as a package. It seems to perform fine with fan speed from 1800 to 4500 and it has LED's and build in finger protection. Looks like a nice choice for overclockers and perhaps for some mod-project.
Unfortunately it does not look like this cooler is aimed for the SPCR audience. I can't possibly see that this cooler would beat the 7000A-AlCu cooler with noice and cooling performance and I would be very suprised if the price tag was even close to the 7000A-AlCu.

prodeous · Post by **prodeous** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 10:09 am

Well, i'm not shure what to say. One thing for shure is that to really know if it can even compete to the 7000A-AlCu or Cu, is to wait for more reviews.

And RPM doesn't translate directly to noise. Since this is a non standard fan.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 12:17 pm

Link to actual review at Hardwarezone.com

prodeous · Post by **prodeous** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 8:00 am

Another review at Legion Hardware.

http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=278&p=1

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 8:56 am

I could only read part of the review at Legion Hardware since that site seems to have problems. From what I could tell they was very excited over the looks and the LEDs (*sigh*).

This image from the review was very interesting. From the looks of it either the bottom half or at least a big part of the mid section does not really get any airflow. The fins in this part is probably mostly there to make the cooler look good. Also notice the huge difference in how the heatpipes ends looks like. This will probably not affect performance, but it does give a hint on the quality of the cooler.

The fact that they use a specialized fan and integrated controls on circuit board will make it impossible to replace the fan and very hard to lower the fan speed below 1900 RPM. That would probably at least be louder than an L1A @12V on this coolers lowest setting.

They also meantion briefly that the cooler capacity did not increase much as they increased speed (compared to other coolers) and the review thought this was good?
Not that I would ever dream of running the CPU fan faster than its lowest setting, but this thing is actually aimed towards modders and overclockers, so there is a good reason they want more cooling when they turn the fan up.

powergyoza · Post by **powergyoza** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 11:45 am

silvervarg wrote:From the looks of it either the bottom half or at least a big part of the mid section does not really get any airflow.

Just the middle section where the motor assembly is. The bottom half gets airflow.

The fact that they use a specialized fan and integrated controls on circuit board will make it impossible to replace the fan and very hard to lower the fan speed below 1900 RPM. That would probably at least be louder than an L1A @12V on this coolers lowest setting.

Yeah, I can't tell if you can use your own controller to get the fan below 5v. You must be able to right?

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 1:41 pm

with the proper adapters, you should be able to use your controller on it. but as silvervarg said, the tight spacing of the fins will probably restrict airflow at low speeds and reduce cooling performance dramatically.

perhaps if they used a smaller motor and a revised fin design (to cope with lower airflow) then it would be worthy of an spcr review - but as it stands, i think it is not.