VGA Heatpipe Cooler & Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9700 PRO Ultimate Edition

[MrB]

Tom's Hardware has taken a more in-depth look at Zalman heatpipe cooler which is used in the Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9700 PRO Ultimate Edition. He also looked at the Sapphire itself briefly.

A long time ago, when video games consisted of blocky pixels, graphics cards didn't need an active cooler. Most didn't even need a passive heatsink. Alas, those days are long gone, and so today most cards come with whirring little fans to keep the chip from suffering a heatstroke. Over the last two years we have seen an interesting trend, though, which has taken coolers beyond their main duty and turned them instead into a design element, a form of expression, even. Manufacturers take great pains to ensure that their mainstream cards have that certain "enthusiast", "hardcore" or "modded" look that supposedly attracts the gaming and tweaking audience. At any rate, active cooling has become a must for any self-respecting company, if only for marketing reasons. Passive cooling, on the other hand, is only found on OEM versions for system integraters or in the lowest entry-level range of cards nowadays - if at all.