14 DAY TRIAL // Korean graphics card specialist Zalman has just listed its new Z-Machine GV1000 VGA cooler on its website. As far as the images can tell, it looks like a clone of the company's previous success, the Z-Machine VF1000.
When talking about cooling, copper is the king, and Zalman surely knows that. The new cooler model features four heatpipes that pass through the 0.3mm pure copper fins on the heatsink. In fact, the whole cooler is built of copper with a chromium coating to prevent oxidation. The fins are extremely long and thin, and are disposed horizontally, just like blades. On top of the blades there is the 2 ball-bearing 80mm slim design LED fan, that dissipates the core heat to the exterior.
The fan can work in two modes: The "quiet mode" makes the fan work at only 5 volts, which would allow it spin at maximum 1,650 rotations per minute. The "performance mode" will supply the fan with the regular 12V and will allow it to spin at 3,600 rotations per minute.
The new Z-Machine GV1000 is 60 x 80 x 30 millimeters (LxWxH), The massive copper design adds some extra weigh to it, so expect it to feel like a 390 grams monolith, as sometimes the coolers may seem lighter than in reality, which kind of catches the user by surprise. The cooler comes with the Zalman FanMate2, that will allow the user to accurately control the fan's speed. It also comes with eight RAM sinks, nuts and springs for miscellaneous mounting configurations.
Since the cooler is quite thick, after it is installed on the graphics card, the PCI slot adjacent to the PCIe (or AGP) slot will get blocked, so you'd better make the necessary adjustments before forcing the graphics card in. If you are the unlucky owner of a Matrox VGA card, NVIDIA PCX 5 , NVIDIA Geforce 6600 AGP Series, Geforce 7600/7900 AGP Series, and ATI Radeon 9550/9600 Series, you'd better start looking for another cooling solution, since the Zalman GV1000 cannot be installed on these cards. If you have a GeForce 8800 Series card, you will have to install Zalman's RAM Heatsink ZM-RHS88 before installing the VF1000, in order to ensure that the RAM heat is also dissipated properly.