The problem with my graphic card fan
When I upgraded my old Athlon XP to my new Athlon 64 box, I was forced to buy a new graphic card because the new motherboard only supported PCI-E cards. So I got the XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme 256MB GDDR3.
At that time all reviews for any decent graphic cards were noticing the irritating noise made by their fans. I therefore decided from the outset to change the stock fan with Artic cooling NV Silencer rev 3 which was recommended in many computer magazines. During the first year the result was quite good and the graphic card was not too loud. However like all fans I think after one year the fan started to become noisy and to irritate me. The problem I though was that I could not exchange the fan for a more silent one and I started to think about fanless cooling solution for the graphic card or if not totally fanless using a fan of my choice on top (litteraly) of a radiator. This lead me to install Thermalright HR-03 Rev A.
General concept
This graphic card cooler is a big (and also heavy) radiator that uses heat pipe technology to shift as much heat as possible from the GPU. Memory modules are cooled with heat spreaders. Because there is no fan, the heat has to go somewhere and this means you still need good ventilation in your case. Otherwise your computer case will double as a microwave because the Thermalright is quite an efficient radiator. For additional cooling you can attach an extra fan (not included in the box) to the cooler but as you can see below you will need quite a big case to do that because of the size of this cooler. Personaly I have not enough space between the cooler and the CPU fan.
The end result is a noiseless graphic card but that's the theory we will have to see how hot our graphic card will run at.
Installation
You have the choice of two methods to install the Thermalright cooler. One where the radiator is in front of the GPU and the other where the radiator is located the other side of the PCB as shown in the manual.
At first I tried to install the cooler in front of the video card (type 2 method) because I thought that there was more space between the graphic card and the bottom compartment. Instead of using the provided thermal paste, I used my trusty Artic Silver5 paste which I've already used for the CPU.
However installation was quite painful. You need four hands to get it right and I was on my own! This is because of the mounting bracket which does not hold the screws that you must tighten the other side and that the bracket is located underneath the cooler fins (my fingers are not that smalls you know!). I struggled but finally managed to install the cooler after quite a few swearing (sorry mum 
). Unfortunately the result was poor. The GPU temperature was getting high and thus the fans in the case were spinning too much. Moreover heat cannot easily escape from the back around the backing plates of the computer and I could feel that the inside of the case was getting hotter and hotter. 
I guess this could be due to the fact that I failed to install the cooler properly i.e. the heatsink base was not touching the GPU as well as it should have been. I therefore decided to re-install the cooler behind the graphic card this time (type 1 method). After removing the cooler I cleaned the GPU with my trusty TIM cleaner before re-applying some new paste. As a tip don't apply thermal paste to the heatsink base as well as the installation guide would suggest because you don't want too much paste at the end. Just enough to get a good contact between the heatsink and the GPU. Moreover you should only attach the RAM heatsinks (2 in my case) that will be located underneath the heat pipes. The others can be attach later because they gave me trouble while I was installing the cooler. Otherwise installation was surprisingly easy. The reason is that the screws can be locked into the backplate and the cooler fins are out of the way when fixing to the mounting bracket. The completed installation is illustrated below:
Conclusion and result
Even if it took me two attempts to install Thermalright cooler, I don't regret it at all. Not only does my graphic card is now noiseless but its temperature is now control with my mCubed T-Balancer which reduce the fan noise level to the minimum. I even found that after playing a game the temperature of the GPU is lower than when it was fitted with Artic cooling NV Silencer rev 3.
- Advantages
- Noiseless.
- More efficient.
- I can use whichever fans to get rid of the heat.
- Drawbacks
- Cannot overclock your graphic card.
- Size and weight.
- Installation using type 2 method troublesome.
- Forget about SLI.
