Aftermarket Cooler Installation (Thermalright HR-03 Rev.A)

After the numerous positive comments about the aftermarket cooler section in the HD3870 review, I have decided to begin discussing aftermarket cooling solutions in ALL of the GPU reviews from this point forward.

This time I will be looking at the installation of a Thermalright HR-03 Rev.A onto the XFX 8800GTS 512MB. It should be noted that even though this cooler fits without a problem, it is not listed as being compatible with the G92-based cards. This is because it does not provide enough heatsinks for the VRM modules on the card. However, ramsinks are cheap these days and should not cost you more than $12 for a package of eight but it is VERY important that you use heatsinks on exposed VRM modules.

Since the hole offset around the core is identical to that of the 8600GT/GTS, any cooler which is listed to work with these cards will also work with the 8800GTS 512MB. This includes the Thermaltake DuOrb, Thermalright V2, Arctic Cooling Accelero S1, Zalman VF-900 and any other cooler which is compatible with the 7900 or 8600-series cards. The only thing that needs to be added is heatsinks for the VRM modules (4 to be exact). I can hear owners of these older heatsinks dancing in the streets even as I write this…


Even though installing this particular heatsink is a bit of a pain on ANY card, it installed perfectly on the 8800GTS 512MB. Something to take note of is the height which is quite a bit taller than the stock heatsink when a 90mm fan is installed.


Here you can see that I used a number of low-profile heatsinks on 3 of the VRM module clusters and a leftover VRM heatsink I had lying around (the long and narrow heatsink closest to the camera). This long heatsink could easily be replaced by a square one if that is all you have.


Performance Results

To measure temperatures I have used nTune’s temperature monitoring program to log the GPU temperatures over a 1-hour time period. The graphics cards were installed into a Gigabyte Aurora 570 case and the temperature of the room was kept at a constant 24.2°C at the beginning of each test. The side panel of the case was closed for each of these tests.

In addition, a 90mm fan operating at 1000rpm was installed.



Even though the stock heatsink did a bang-up job of taming the heat of the 8800GTS, the Thermalright HR-03 Rev.A improves upon it in leaps and bounds. This was all done while lowering the overall acoustical footprint quite a bit by having the 90mm fan rotating at 1000rpm. The only downside of this setup is that any heat buildup will stay inside of your case instead of being exhausted out the back like the stock heatsink does.

It should also be noted that overclocks do not seem to be held back by the stock cooler and installing the HR-03 had no effect on how far I could push either the memory or the core.