Potential Warning Regarding HD3870X2 Cooler Compatibility
 

All right guys. I was in the process of doing an article about aftermarket cooler compatibility with the HD3870X2. Great, right? Sure, the HR-03 Rev-A fit without a problem so I went out and bought some GPU water blocks and a pair of Zalman VF-700 air coolers.

I am publishing these results BEFORE I publish an article because I'd rather people know about this ASAP.

Well, lo and behold this is what I came up with:

Water blocks:

Swiftech MCW60 = INCOMPATIBLE
Danger Den Maze 5 = INCOMPATIBLE
D-TEK Fuzion GFX = INCOMPATIBLE

Air Coolers:

Zalman VF-700 = INCOMPATIBLE


Before I go off all half-cocked, I would also like to ask if ANYONE has seen someone who has a 7600 / X800 compatible GPU block installed on their HD3870X2.

Why the HR-03 Rev.A actually fit is beyond me...maybe more tolerance between the holes. From what I have seen with all of these coolers, there is about a 2-3m difference between the hole locations of the GPU mounthing plates from these coolers and the HSF mounthing holes around the cores.

also the single gpu 3870's stock bios fan speed is not good enough... You're gonna need Rivatuner to up the speeds manually to game. Otherwise enjoy a good crashing or shutdown. :(

Yeah. And Rivatuner DOES work but with a modded .cfg file.

skymtl, i was looking at the card "just got mine in the mail" and i was thinking that what if you attached 1 HR-03-REV on the 1st gpu mounted in the normal way. and then the 2ed one mounted in revers ( http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...ev-review.html ) look at the pics of the other way that he mounted the cooler upside down. do you think it could work? they wood not interfere with each other... now there is no way in hell you could crossfire with that config but we can worry about that wen the new drivers are out

It won't work because the heatpipes of the HR-series won't clear the VRM modules. Also, the fins themselves will come into conflict with your case and you will not be able to install it that way either.

o i see.. that sucks... well as you sed in the reivew it will be interesting to see what the up coming coolers look like .... do any of you know how well the water cooling works on with card?

Sapphire HD3870x2 is not compatible with EK HD3870x2 water block. I installed it yesterday and some mounting points are different, but I am like a dumbass decided to put it on anyways... After tighting up some screws the card took weird bent shape... and when I turned on the system... The card caught on fire and even burned the water block a bit.

SAPPHIRE HD3870X2 is INCOMPATIBLE with EK HD3870X2

my sapphire card worked fine with my EK blocks.

Diablo you cut me with the question..... Those combination of GPU WC cost a fortune, better have the good one first <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
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