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The Card Cooler XT
Date Reviewed: August 15, 2000
Reviewed By: Jason Rabel
Company URL: http://www.thecardcooler.com
Cost: $34 USD
First Impressions & Installation:
The Card Cooler XT is nothing short of being a
monster! Using two huge Sunon fans mounted on a custom bracket, The Card Cooler
XT easily covers all your card slots and part of your CPU. This beast may not be
for everyone, one thing I noticed is that in smaller cases it simply won't fit,
so be sure to measure the space first! But for everyone with a good size Mid /
Full tower you are in luck!

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Fans
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2 - 120mm Sunon
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Power Consumption
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2.4 watts / each
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Fan Speed
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2400 RPM
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Bearing System
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Ball Bearing
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Noise Level
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35.5db / fan
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Air Delivery
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69CFM each - TOTAL 138CFM!!!
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Installation couldn't be simpler, you simply
remove a couple screws that hold down your cards, position The Card Cooler XT
over the spot you want, and screw them back in! Then you plug the power
connector into the standard 4 pin connection, and you are good to go.
Temp's & Conclusion:
This baby is sweet! I tested it with my Geforce DDR w/Tennmax
Lasgna BGA Cooler (Read the review for that), and I also took a couple case
temps.
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Temp Location
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Idle
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Full Load
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Without The Card Cooler XT
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Video Card
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116.6 F
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130.3 F
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Case Temp 1
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82 F
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100 F
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Case Temp 2
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82 F
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104 F
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Now With The Card Cooler XT
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Video Card
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110.7 F
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122 F
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Case Temp 1
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78 F
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98 F
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Case Temp 2
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78 F
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95 F
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See the difference? Six to eight degree drop for the video card,
and about a five degree drop for the case temp! The Card Cooler XT really fits
the job of circulating the air over the PCI/AGP cards in a system and keeping
them a lot cooler. This unit really isn't as noisy as you may thing, with your
case on it's just a low "hum"... One thing you may notice about the
picture is that it is partially covering my Alpha Cooler, and as we all know
Alpha's are supposed to blow upwards. This presents a unique problem since The
Card Cooler XT is blowing downwards, they are counteracting each other's
efforts. Solution? I simply switched the bottom fan on the Alpha to blow
downwards too...
For $34 I would consider this a good investment, when you
consider these are high quality 120mm ball bearing Sunon fans, you could expect
to pay $15 each for them, so throw in a little for the heavy duty brackets and
finger guards and screws. Total that up and you can figure out that you are not
getting ripped off by price markups. Jacque over at The
Card Cooler has really done it this time coming out with an excellent
product to complement their original card cooler (which is still for sale for
you people with smaller cases or just wanting something smaller / cheaper)...
So now you are asking yourself, "Gee, where can I get one
of these?!?!" Well, get them straight from the source at www.thecardcooler.com!
Or you can win one for free by going to our contest
page! (This page will be where all the contests are, so bookmark it when
you go there!)
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