Zalman VF900-Cu LED VGA cooler review

Our Tests

We ran some simple tests to check the performance from Zalman VF900-Cu LED, measuring the GPU core temperature with the aid of the SpeedFan software, and sound pressure level (SPL) with a digital noise meter set 4" (10 cm) from the video card, with the GPU at full load running folding@Home GPU client. For this measurement, we turned off the CPU cooler, so its noise wouldn’t interfere. Please keep in mind that sound pressure level measurement is just for comparative purposes, because a precise measurement would have to be done in an acoustically insulated enviroment, which we don’t have.

We performed the described measurements on our PNY Verto GeForce 9600 GT with the stock cooler, with Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 VGA cooler, and with Zalman VF900-Cu LED cooler at minimum and maximum speeds. Room temperature was 21 °C during all tests. You can check the results in the table below.

As you can see, Zalman VF900-Cu LED has done very well, being quieter than the stock cooler and NV Silencer 5 (even at full speed) and keeping the GPU core temperature low (even at low speed).

Tests with our Zotac GeForce GTS 250 were made the same way, also at a room temperature of 21 °C. The results are in the table below.

As you can see, on GeForce GTS 250 (which is hotter than GeForce 9600 GT), Zalman VF900-Cu LED was not powerful enough, being worst than the stock cooler. Remember, however, that GeForce GTS 250 is not on the list of compatible video cards for this cooler.