ZALMAN VF3000A EBR Bearing VGA Cooler

Pros: Solid construction and excellent heat dissipation. My overclocked 5870 is rocking at 1025mhz core and 1250mhz memory clock at 1.275V with no issue. Idle temp is 39oC with ambient at 72oC and full load temp is topping at 62oC. This is with the fan at 50% speed!

Cons: Had to get better thermal paste and needed to use thermal tape for the memory heat sinks. the stuff this cooler comes with just doesn't cut it for serious over clocking, Also the cooler is big. it is a 3 slot cooler, but it does the job very very well.

Other Thoughts: Cooler is good and quite. the fan controller it comes with does limit its max rpm quite alot though. If you got a mother board that can control fan speed plug it into that and use that with speed fan. works better and doesn't limit your gpu to its maximum overclock potential.

Pros: At Half Speed, With an ambient Temperature of around 32C+ it keeps my XfX 6870 @ 50C under a full load. Although it doesn't say here that its compatible with a 6870 i had no trouble installing it onto my Video card and this was my 1st time installing a 2nd party Cooler onto a Video Card.

Cons: It is rather Large, Bigger than the actual Video card but the Cooler does an excellent job so not a big deal

Other Thoughts: I bought this because the Fan on the Factory Cooler broke Even before the original fan stopped working, the Video card temperature would reach 70C under a full load( which is still a safe operating temperature for the 6870). So With this cooler its quite the improvement.

Pros: - Pretty easy to install
- Some extra parts included (May not be the case for everyone)
- Instructions weren't terrible and helped
- Temps went down considerably
- Fairly light weight
- Really quiet
- Looks great

Cons: Note: These are minor and them being a con varies from person to person. Not worthy of reducing an egg.

- Fans are not controlled by the GPU's fan controller
- Takes up 3 slots
- Air blows into the case instead of out the back (Most aftermarket coolers and non-reference designs do this though)
- Can't use back plate with this cooler installed

Other Thoughts: This was installed on a reference design XFX 5870 that has had heavy usage. The fan on the 5870 started to die, RPM would dip lower and lower, GPU temps would rise and a very annoying loud noise would occur.

With this installed, my GPU temps went down considerably. From an idle temp of around 46c to now an average idle temp of 32c. The sound of the fans at 100% equal to about the sound of the fans on the reference cooler at 55%. Very quiet I think.

The installation was fairly simple. Reading the directions showed me everything I needed to do. It will be easy to take the cooler off and put it back on when it needs to be cleaned. It feels pretty secure too.

I used Arctic Cooling MX-4 thermal paste in replacement of the thermal paste provided. I'm not sure how much that helped with lowering temperature but it's a nice addition to the cooler itself.

All in all I couldn't be happier. I find the 5870 to still be an amazing performer and I hope to keep it for a long time until games start to be more difficult to run at medium to high settings. Thanks Zalman for an amazing product and Newegg for providing it and shipping it fast. (2 days instead of the 3 days the shipping estimated)

Pros: 10 bucks cheaper than the rest.

aluminum look compared to the others plastic look. Covers the front of the fans a bit to protect it from lose wires and bad handling. sturdy.

The color is RED!

Has 3 holes for the connection to the card, so it will probably fit most ATI card.

came with sticker and thermal paste.

ram heatsinks work

went from overheating at... to being stable at overclock speeds of...
gpu 925 to 1000
memory 1000 to 1150

Cons: A finger wider and longer than the stock, so it might not fit

blue led lights from a red fan...

remote control to make fan faster or slower is not wireless and it is something else that goes in my case... would have been cool to have gotten a dial for mounting it in the cd/dvd bay area to use it on the front of the machine instead of using the sticky note they gave you to stick it on the side of your case or to leave it un mounted in the case.

didn't come with paste cleaner to clean the gpu.

plastic everywhere. pain to get the plastic off the ram heatsinks.

Other Thoughts: can't fit 2 in my case, due to wireless card and psu is mounted on the bottom

for people with 2 or more video cards, buy 1 first to make sure it will fit with it having it on all the cards.

I had a good review for this 950/1000 words on each, but when i went to submit, it told me to log on and removed what i put in. went back to the page and it was gone. so apologies for having this look unprofessional.

Pros: low temps! i have this running on an asus hd 6970 (non dc-II) and it idles at around 32 C (20 C ish ambient temp) and i havnt seen it go above 62 C full load when overclock to 975 core / 1500 mem. i recommend this cooler to anyone with a 5k or 6k series card, it rocks.

Cons: Im glad i did my research before i bought. there is a special vrm heatsink you NEED to buy if your going to put this on a 6950/6970. make sure you pick that up if this applies to you! also on a 6970, one of the heatsinks is supposed to cover both 1 of the ram modules and a little chip. it covers it just fine on a 5870, but the little chip is just slightly too far on the 6970 from that ram module. i just combined one of the ram sinks with that special sink with some good ol' arctic silver thermal adhesive and its fine. here is the product number ZM-RHS69

Other Thoughts: if you have a crossfire setup, you might think about spacing the cards farther apart as this cooler is fairly tall. I have a single card solution so it doesnt bother me. also, for reference to the thermal paste that comes with it, it seems fine as these awesome temps are a result of using the cooler with the thermal paste that came with! good job zalman! your awesome

Pros: Very good quality/ build, efficient cooling, comes with a plethora of extra stuff e.g. Mosfet coolers, Ram sinks etc. Works on a 6950. Also, features a handy connector that you can stick to the back of your computer, to control fan speed.

Cons: Does not use fan connector on the VGA board, forcing me to disconnect the chassis fan to run the 3 pin connector, as I had none free from my power supply, but that was fine because I had an AOC PCI fan blowing air out of the case already. The type A ramsink also does not work well for non-reference 6000 series cards, as it runs into a nearby chip that is too high and big to dodge/ fit it over. I had to remove one of the extra type B ramsink off of the neighboring Ram module and use the Type A across both but that's fine. Also, the Type A ramsink looks out of place and differs in design from the type B.

Other Thoughts: I wish these 3rd party companies would figure out a way to create a more "vapor chamber" style heatsink, so ambient heat isn't being blown around the case. This is why I changed mine to begin with, as it was a Dual Dissipation style XFX heatsink and would skyrocket to +68c-72c and heat my CPU and Mosfets up even more. It was like a blow dryer in there. Thankfully, the Zalman runs cooler and you can keep the fan set at an even 50%

Pros: Amazing cooler like my titles says I own a 6870 by XFX and my card was running, completely underclocked, at load at around 75C in an air conditioned room. With the cooler I can run the card overclocked at it wont touch 55C and hovers around 52C at load. Great cooler, great cooler, great cooler.

Cons: None whatsoever, do look at other thoughts though

Other Thoughts: Like people have been saying this car is heavier than the stock cooler, but it also has a lot for surface area to cool the cards gpu so that is to be expected. Read the instructions, once before you install it on to your fan to get an idea of where things go, and then read them again when you install. This worked for me, but it was still the world's scariest jigsaw puzzle. Overall if you are careful you won't brick your card, and if your careful you will be ecstatic about the difference in temps you get on card.

For the XFX 6870 owners, this is the cooler for you, even though its not reference, the only things you lose are 2 heatsinks you can fit if you want to dremel tool them, or be lazy like me and not add them and you will be fine. The socket for the GPU fits perfect, so despite the cooler being non-reference IT WILL FIT!

Pros: Does a decent enough job. Idles around 30-40c depending on if my a/c is on. I live in Texas and it's summer so I say it's fair. Under load playing Bad Company 2 max i've seen is 65c so far but much more stable then my old stock cooler.

Cons: This is not made for a 6870. I knew that when I bought it. It does fit but it's slightly off center. So if your very neat it might bother you but it does the job. I wish it was all Copper but oh well. The price wasn't awful but only option that would work for my video card without spending another 30bucks that I didn't want to spend.

Other Thoughts: I have the Msi r6870 Twin Frozer II I bought this thinking I wouldn't have to replace the cooler but I was wrong and wasted more money then just getting a regular ol' 6870. But overall it's fine. I didn't use the red heat spreaders they gave. Mine already had an Aluminium silver plates that overed all the ram and what not. So yeah, if you use those might help but I left the stock ones on from my card because they covered all the memory. I didn't bother with the rebate either. It's overclock as well so yeah full load temps are around 65c not bad. And I used the paste Zalman provided ran out of my own so just food for thought. As far as it destroying your card I think that is just the gamble you take when putting on aftermarket products. All I can say is ground yourself and place it on a static bag. I was fairly rough with it and it didn't break in any shape or form. As others have stated if your doing crossfire I would suggest another cooler takes up a total about 2 1/2 - 3 depending.

Pros: It's good looking VGA Cooler and it's a great replacement to the stock cooler.

Cons: Also it optimized for ATI 5780 I was able to to make it work on ATI 5770 the position of the chip on board is different so the cooler kind stick out about 3 inch but I got big case so it's not really a problem.
No complain to newegg but rather then quality control of ZALMAN the unit came defective one of the fans was crooked and was hiting the bottom part of the heat sink. I have to pull a cover to make some adjustments to the fan so there is a gap between fan and the heat sink it worked but then fan started to hit the top cover so I end up removing the top cover all together it doesn't really do anything and just adds extra weight.
Ok finally I got it installed the GPU was running at 55 c before now it droped to 33C. Running Skyrim on max settings before it was going up to 84 -90c crashing sometimes now it went down to 40c - 42c. Ok I'm impressed. Great Cooler design bad quality control.

Pros: 20c Cooler under load

Cons: Big ! Take alot of room in your case

Other Thoughts: I put this on my ATI 6870 that was running 75c under BF3 load. Now I max out at 55c. Im happy !!