[nextpage title=”Introduction”]
The Deepcool Gamer Storm Dracula is a huge VGA cooler with a two-piece heatsink, six heatpipes, and can be used with four 120 mm or three 140 mm fans. Let’s test it!
The Dracula box is simple and black, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 2 shows the contents of the box: the Dracula heatsink, a syringe of thermal compound, a manual, thermal adhesive, lots of heatsinks for memory chips and voltage regulator transistors, and installation hardware. It doesn’t come with fans.
Figure 3 displays the Dracula heatsink.
Figure 3: The Dracula heatsink
This cooler is discussed in detail in the following pages.
[nextpage title=”The Dracula”]
Figure 4 illustrates the front of the cooler. Please notice that the heatpipes go from the base in both directions, so there are actually two independent heatsinks.
Figure 5 reveals the top view of the heatsink, where you see the six heatpipes.
In Figures 6 and 7, you can see the sides of the heatsink, where the shape of the fins is shown.
[nextpage title=”The Dracula (Cont’d)”]
Figure 8 shows the bottom of the heatsink, where the heatpipes are fully visible.
Figure 9 reveals the perfectly mirrored base of the cooler.
In Figure 10, you can see the fan holder. The fans are not attached to the heatsink but are screwed to a fan holder that goes on the adjacent slot of the case.
The Dracula doesn’t come with fans, but Deepcool sent us two 120 mm fans with it, one ICE BLADE (1,500 rpm) and one WIND BLADE (1,300 rpm). Figure 11 shows the fans installed on the holder.
[nextpage title=”Installation”]
In order to run a performance test, we installed the Dracula on our Point of View GeForce GTX 460 video card.
Figures 12 and 13 show the card with and without its stock cooler.
Figure 12: Point of View GeForce GTX 460
Figure 13: Point of View GeForce GTX 460 with the cooler removed
Thanks to the several threaded holes at the base of the cooler, the Dracula is compatible with most video cards. The first step is to install the holding screws at the base, as shown in Figure 14.
The installation is simple. Just put the cooler in place and hold it using four nuts at the solder side of the video card. Figure 15 reveals the Dracula heatsink installed on our GeForce GTX 460.
[nextpage title=”Installation (Cont’d)”]
Figure 16 shows the Dracula installed on our video card. It is longer than our VGA, which is only 8.3 inches (210 mm) long. Keep in mind that, even with a short video card, with this cooler installed, you will need 10.8 inches (275 mm) of clearance in your computer case (or more, depending on your video card).
Figure 17 reveals the solder side of the video card with the Dracula installed. The cooler comes with a backplate that can be used with most cards, but our GeForce GTX 460 has a rectangular disposition of t
he holes, which doesn’t allow using the backplate.
In Figure 18, you can see the video card installed in our case.
Figure 18: Installed in our case
Figure 19 shows our system after installing the fans. The fan holder actually helps to support the heatsink weight, thus helping to avoid the video card bending. Notice that, after installing the fans, the video card with the Dracula uses four expansion slots.
This cooler also supports one 140 mm or two 120 mm fans installed perpendicularly to the other ones, blowing directly at the video card. However, as we noticed while trying to install them, the tower CPU cooler interfered with those fans.
[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]
We tested this VGA cooler with a Point of View GeForce GTX 460 card with 1 GB. The GeForce GTX 460 GPU has a TDP of 160 W. In order to get 100% GPU usage, we ran the Folding@Home GPU3 client.
We compared the Dracula to the VGA stock cooler and to the Deepcool V6000 VGA cooler.
Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the GPU thermal sensors). During the tests, the left panel of the case was open.
The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4 inches (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the case and CPU cooler fans so they wouldn’t interfere with the results. This measurement is only for comparison purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which isn’t the case here.
Hardware Configuration
- Processor: Core i7-860
- CPU cooler: Prolimatech Lynx
- Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD6
- Memory: 2 GB Markvision (DDR3-1333/PC3-10700 with 9-9-9-22 timings), configured at 1,200 MHz
- Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
- Video card: Point of View GeForce GTX 460 1GB
- Video resolution: 1024×768
- Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
- Case: 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX Cool
Operating System Configuration
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit SP1
Software Used
Error Margin
We adopted a 2o C error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2o C are considered irrelevant.
[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]
The table below presents the results of our measurements.
Cooler | Room Temp. | Noise | Core Temp. |
Stock cooler | 23 °C | 54 dBA | 76 °C |
Deepcool V6000 | 22 °C | 50 dBA | 54 °C |
Deepcool Gamer Storm Dracula | 23 °C | 54 dBA | 47 °C |
In the graph below, at full load you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the GPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.
[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]
The main specifications for the Deepcool Gamer Storm Dracula VGA cooler include:
- Application (ATI/AMD): Radeon series X1600, X1900, HD 2600, 2450, 3650, 3690, 3850, 3870, 4650, 4670, 4750, 4830, 4850, 4860, 4870, 5670, 5750, 5770, 5850, 5870, 6850, 6870, 6950, and 6970
- Application (NVIDIA): GeForce series 6600, 7300, 7400, 7600, 7800, 7900, 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GT 210, GT 220, GT 240, GTS 250, GTX 2xx, GTX 460, GTX 470, GTX 480, GTX 560, GTX 570, and GTX 580
- Dimensions: 3.9 x 10.0 x 1.7 inches (100 x 253 x 43 mm) (W x L x H)
- Fins: Aluminum
- Base: Nickel-plated copper
- Heat-pipes: Six 6-mm copper heatpipes
- Fan: Up to four 120 mm fans or three 140 mm fans (not included)
- Nominal fan speed: NA
- Fan air flow: NA
- Maximum power consumption: NA
- Nominal noise level: NA
- Weight: 1.25 lb (566 g)
- More information: https://www.gamerstorm.cn
- MSRP in the U.S.: USD 75.00
[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]
Forgive us the pun, but the Deepcool Gamer Storm Dracula is a real monster VGA cooler, not just because of its size, but mainly because of its monstrous cooling performance.
It over-performed the Deepcool V6000 (which was one of the best VGA coolers we tested so far) by eight degrees Celsius, even using relatively quiet fans. Compared to the stock cooler, the Dracula kept the GPU an amazing 29 degrees colder!
Showing this incredible cooling performance, we proudly give the GamerStorm Dracula our Golden Award.
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