GX810 reporting for duty

Unlike the GX700’s (read the review here), the GX800 comes in a nice silver shiny box, which is a lot easier to open than the clamshell method. From the very outset, you can tell that this is going to be a quality product.

Once you’ve popped the box, you’ll find everything labelled and in its right position. For example, there is a space for SLI/Crossfire nuts and bolts, and another for standard installation. The RAM heatsinks (which are the same as the ones packaged with the GX700’s) are also in their own cubby hole. Other than this, you’ll find the cooler itself, a shrunken toothpaste tube of heatpaste, and the installation manual.

The RAM heatsinks have many fins, which branch out meaning a higher surface area, which means more space for heat to escape from. They are all self adhesive making installation easy.

The GX810 is fully copper, apart from the mounting bracket which is aluminium; all 140 fins are copper and each have a little ZEROtherm logo on them. Just like the GX700 and GX710, the extra 10 means that it’s made of copper. Today I only have the copper version which weighs in at 188.2g while the aluminium version is a meagre 148.5g.

Unlike the GX700’s, there isn’t a shroud to redirect air, instead there are fins which mean more surface area = more heat lost. The fins are provided with heat by the circular heatpipe which moves heat away from the interface pad.

This pad is nicely polished and you can easily see your reflection in it. There are no distortions in the reflection which means that it’s nice and flat.

To keep the temperature of the fins down, there is a radial blower which forces air to radiate from it, rather than forcing it through itself. This method has become increasingly popular recently as it means that the fan is quieter and uses up less space. Speaking of space, the cooler is quite slim, meaning that you can use it in a multi-GPU situation.

To power this fan, there is a 3 pin connector which simply slots into a motherboard fan header. The fan itself is temperature controlled by a built in temperature sensor. When the heat starts to rise, so does the fan speed. This translates to having the quietest case, while maintaining a safe operating temperature.

The fan on this cooler is actually a little bigger than the ones used on the GX700’s. It rotates between 900~2500RPM making between 16.95~29.85 decibels in the process. This is actually louder than the GX700’s. However, this is designed for high-end cards, rather than the older generation of graphics cards.

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

Unlike the GX700’s, this cooler could probably cope with cooling an 8800. Instead, the space between the mounting holes on the 8800 are too fan apart, meaning that the mounting bracket simply won’t reach.