Introduction

About a month ago one of my Gainward 6600GT (in SLI mode) standard fan decided to die and blow up in my machine, luckily the standard heatsink kept it cool enough so that my GPU would not melt.  This was an opportunity (an excuse) to buy a VGA cooler. But the most important facter to me was "SILENCE", it has to be quiet, secondly it has to cool effeciently and lastly its got to look good.

The first brand at the tip of my tongue was Artic Cooling and its NV Silencer series, but after much research into finding a QUIET VGA cooler another brand seemed to pop-up on many e-shops as well as in high street stores "Zalman".

A thorough read-up on their website has drawn most of my attention to their statement:

"We were the world's first in reducing computer noise down to lower than 20dB, thus creating a more user-friendly computing environment. Now it is possible to use a computer without distracting noise and to form high fidelity audio system or home theatre system without ambient noise." - Zalman Website

So who is Zalman? Well, they are a Korean company established in 1999, that has offices in the USA and who also have their own R&D Centre, they produce many products other than just VGA cooling including:

• System Cases including their TNN (Totally No Noise) System
• Water Cooling Systems
• Coolers for CPU, GPU, chipsets and hard disks
• Quiet PSUs
• Quiet Case/Chassis Fans and Fan Controllers
• 
  
• 

 Its nice to know that there is a company dedicated to the cause of producing quiet products for the PC while still maintaining high performance and great aesthetics. Browsing through their website I have seen some amazingly great looking products and some "does it really work?" products. What really stood out was the the technology and technical design of the heatsinks which in-corporated many ultra slim fins in a a shape of a flower/bowl allowing effecient air flow between the fins.

So what so special about these Zalman quiet VGA coolers? Well the Zalman VF700 is designed with ultra slim fins which make them lighter and cause less air resistance to air flow, it also has a copper block centre core which will allow it to transfer and absorb heat better from the GPU core. The fan can operate in 2 modes, silent which does not generate noise or vibrations and also normal mode which can be selected by the user.

RAM heatsinks also come as a part of the package, as they say the fan will also blow air across them too since there is an improved airflow through the ultra slim fins. The VF700 is also compatible with many Nvidia Geforce cards from 5xxx series right up to the 7900 series and only certain ATI models, so remember to check the compatibility if you are going to purchase one.

Can the Zalman VF700 VGA coolers stand up to their claim of silent cooling without affecting cooling performance? Let us see how well it does