Silence is golden

The coolers, named GX700 (aluminium) and GX710 (copper), are packaged in a triangle clamshell box, which is easy enough to open.

Inside, you’ll find the cooler itself, a manual on how to install, 8 green extruded RAM heatsinks with self-adhesive backing, nuts and bolts, the back bracket and a small tube of heatpaste.

The RAM heatsinks are an odd colour; green. They aren’t the usual shape, instead they have forked prongs which increase surface area which is primarily what you want when removing heat. They are quite small, and won’t cause any issues with surrounding components as a result.

The GX700 is made entirely of aluminium which gives it its silver colour. The fan mount is transparent blue plastic with a large ‘ZEROtherm’ logo slapped on the side. The GX710 is copper and hence the fan mount is a complimentary orange and it also has a large logo on the side.

Both coolers have a U-shaped heatpipe that moves hotness from the core interface pad to the ‘optimized pitch’ fins which apparently are positioned in such a way to reduced dust clogs. This should mean that the cooler won’t lose so much efficiency over time from balls of dead skin etc.

On both of the heatsinks, the bottom is made of aluminium and there is a circular interface pad. This is protected by the usual ‘don’t leave this on’ warnings, underneath the pad you’ll see the lapping. Both of the pads aren’t spectacular. They are a matt finish rather than being mirrored/polished. They are flat however, so you won’t have to use gallons of the free heatpaste.

To connect the fan to a power source, ZEROtherm have opted for the standard 3pin motherboard type which can be in short supply on some motherboards. Fortunately, the wire is quite long allowing you to route to the nearest free socket.

The fan is a ZEROtherm creation and uses a paddle design rather than fins. This type of fan forces air to radiate from it, rather than forcing it in one direction like a normal case fan would. To make sure that the air goes over the 100 degrees of fins, there is a shroud on the other side.

The fans on the two coolers are exactly the same bar the colour and they use ceramic bearings rather than steel. This has several advantages, like weight and lifespan. As steel weighs more than ceramic, the steel requires more energy to start and continue rotation. Ceramic bearings also allow higher speeds, this is not a factor in ZEROtherm’s choice as the fans only spin at 1600RPM spitting out 14.7 decibels. The fan is fixed at this speed no matter how hot the core beneath it reaches.

These coolers are compatible with pretty much all of the ATI and nVidia cards on the market bar 8800’s.

The lack of support for 8800’s is not only due to the mounting hole positions, but the fact that these aren’t the biggest coolers in the world. The 8800 series is very hot, hence the ridiculously sized stock cooler that you get with it.