Thermalright HR-03 GT GPU Cooler Review

Overclock Temperatures

In these tests we overclocked our 8800GTS 512MB card to 820Mhz core speed and 2200Mhz (DDR) on the memory. The same 30 minute Batch Size test from the Load tests was run and the temperatures were logged with nTune.



Here we can really see the power of the HR-03 GT come into play. While the Thermaltake DuOrb is completely overpowered by the extra heat produced by the overclocked G92 core, the stock cooler puts out an absolute racket. Its fan was spinning for all it was worth while trying to keep the temperatures at a manageable level.

However, even though the Thermalright HR-03 GT was able to shave off nearly 20*C off of the stock cooler’s temperatures we could not achieve any higher overclocks. Both the memory and the core reached the same 820 / 2234 Mhz overclocks as were achieved on the stock cooler. This leads me to believe it is core and memory voltages that are limiting the overclock rather than temperatures.


Interior Case Temperatures

All of the interior case temperatures were taken using a Type-K thermometer in the location shown in this picture (note the red circle). The GPU was then run through the Load test for 30 minutes and the temperature reading form the thermometer was then recorded.


Between each test, the system was shut down for 2 hours in order for the room temperature and the system temperature to normalize. The next test was then begun and the process was repeated for each cooler configuration.



The temperatures we saw inside our Gigabyte Aurora 570 case were about what was expected considering the HR-03 GT does not exhaust hot air outside the case like the stock cooler does. Thus there is a slight increase in interior case temperatures when compared to the stock 8800GTS 512MB cooler but this increase is not as much as we see with the Thermaltake DuOrb.