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Thermalright T-Rad2 GTX & VRM R3 Video Card Heatsink Review
Author: Will West
Published: Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Conclusion
There are many reasons for buying an aftermarket cooler; some are looking to keep their systems extremely quiet while others may be looking to increase heat capacity for overclocking. The Thermalright T-Rad2 GTX and VRM R3 can handle both of those situations and in some cases, at the same time.
The installation of the two heatsinks is very simple and rather straight forward. We did want to note one issue with the VRM R3 cooler in that we had to bend it slightly to ensure it made good contact with the VRM chips. Unfortunately after bending the heatsink into place it still didn't make full contact with the entire VRM unlike the OEM cooler. We feel this affected our overclocking stability and caused the VRM temps to be higher than expected. Despite this the overall installation went extremely smooth and caused us no problems at all.
Overall the combo is a great replacement over the stock cooler and does a great job with mild overclocks without adding any additional noise to the system setup. The Thermalright T-Rad2 GTX is a rather large heatsink and with fans mounted will take up 3 expansion slots. This can cause problems for Crossfire setups but single card installations should pose no issues at all.
The installation of the two heatsinks is very simple and rather straight forward. We did want to note one issue with the VRM R3 cooler in that we had to bend it slightly to ensure it made good contact with the VRM chips. Unfortunately after bending the heatsink into place it still didn't make full contact with the entire VRM unlike the OEM cooler. We feel this affected our overclocking stability and caused the VRM temps to be higher than expected. Despite this the overall installation went extremely smooth and caused us no problems at all.
Overall the combo is a great replacement over the stock cooler and does a great job with mild overclocks without adding any additional noise to the system setup. The Thermalright T-Rad2 GTX is a rather large heatsink and with fans mounted will take up 3 expansion slots. This can cause problems for Crossfire setups but single card installations should pose no issues at all.
Good Things
Incredible GPU cooling over the OEM cooler
Easy and fast installation
Options for bigger fans to cool with
VRM options for your type of cooling
Added overclocking room
Easy and fast installation
Options for bigger fans to cool with
VRM options for your type of cooling
Added overclocking room
Bad Things
VRM R3 does not properly cool all of the voltage area
The adhesive on the ramsinks needs to hold stronger
The VRM R3 needs another mount point to hold it on the voltage area better
The adhesive on the ramsinks needs to hold stronger
The VRM R3 needs another mount point to hold it on the voltage area better
Thermalright T-Rad2 GTX & VRM R3 Video Card Heatsink Review
Silent 4 of 5
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We would like to thank Thermalright for helping to make this review possible.
