As you can see, the Coolforce II comes with everything you need to mount it with relative ease. You get the cooler, 4 ram coolers (a really nice touch), a tube of thermal compound and a strip of thermal tape to mount the ram coolers. I was really impressed with the fact that they include ram coolers with both the Coolforce I & II. Similar products that we have seen do not. So, how easy is it to install? Well, installation is a snap. Take off the original cooler on your graphics card (quite probably the biggest part of the job since they tend to be stuck on quite solidly), clean up any residual thermal compound (get it all to and make sure everything is nice and clean), apply the included thermal compound and attach the Coolforce II with the provided push pins. There you go; the hardest part is done. For the ram coolers, just attach the thermal tape and stick them on. Put your graphics card back in and prepare to be amazed.
So, what do we think of the Coolforce from Spirecoolers? Well, that depends on what kind of video card you use. If you have a true ATI Radeon then this cooling kit will both add some flash to your case as well as keep your temperatures down. Of course, if you happen to own something like the Powercolor version of the ATI Radeon, well….it comes with some really nice memory chipset heatsinks but forget about mounting the fan. Actually, that’s not exactly true. You could always go out and buy some adhesive thermal paste or use Thermal tape but don’t plan on using the push-pins. So, don’t be fooled; when Spirecoolers says “Recommended for” they truly mean those EXACT products. If you have an alternative version, all bets are off.
Once again, it must be stressed that you make sure your card is compatible with this cooler. Not all cards are made the same and on some the space is at a premium. This being said, the suggestions on the back of the case for the Coolforce II seem to work perfectly, at least for us.
We tested everything out on a GeForce FX 5600, to see how it would perform. Once again we ran Q3 benchmark constantly for 30 minutes on both the stock and modified cards. Stock temperatures hovered around 33.9 idle and 39.8 under load. With the addition of the Coolforce II we were pleasantly surprised. Idle temperatures stayed around 30.7 and an even 35 under load. That was a bigger drop than we expected to see. This GPU cooler is a true performer.
So here is the final judgement on the CoolForce II. We love it! It’s an easy install and it comes with all the attention to detail we have come to expect from Spirecoolers. When you get right down to it, the video card is one of the most (if not THE most) expensive part on many computers. This GPU cooler helps keep the card nice and cool which should help it live a nice long life (until it becomes obsolete and you have to buy a new one!). So, if you are looking for that little bit of extra insurance when it comes to your videocard, you could do a lot worse than the Coolforce II for you nVIDIA card.
Pros:
• Copper
• Red & Yellow leds
• Easy to install
• Dropped our temperatures by an average of 4.8 degrees under load
• Ram coolers, Thermal paste and Thermal tape are all included
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