V2 Benchmarks
We would have liked to benchmark the V2 against the V1 Ultra it replaced, but the V1 Ultra could not attach to our 7900 GS due to a screw-length limitation. We chose to benchmark the Evercool Turbo 2 instead, since the Turbo2 achieved identical cooling results as the V1 Ultra in our last VGA cooler roundup.
We also included Zalman's VF900-Cu in the tests for further reference.
First, we'll look at the V2 when used passively with no fan. Cooling performance is close to the stock solution at idle speed, but more than 20 degrees higher at load. The V2 has a bit of a passive disadvantage compared to coolers that wrap heat pipes around the card to the top where there is more airflow from the case fans, which is precisely what the HR-03 PLUS does. We're getting really close to the 100-degree mark with the V2 and I don't think it is something we'd use passively on a 7900 GS. Perhaps on cooler GPUs like the 8600 GT, the V2 would be a better choice for a passive solution.
When actively cooled with a fan, the V2 wakes up and works better than the rest of the solutions we tested. The V2 performs a bit better than the Evercool Turbo 2, which itself performed identically to the V1 Ultra in a previous test. From this we can infer that the V2 may offer similar cooling performance compared to the older V1 Ultra.
We also see that the V2 surpasses the Zalman VF900-Cu's performance by a hair in this particular case setup. This is interesting because the VF900-Cu performed a bit worse than the Turbo2 and V1 Ultra in our previous roundup. Possible reasons for the difference between these tests and our last tests are that we're using a different motherboard and a CoolIT Eliminator instead of the stock air CPU cooler. Presumably, changes in airflow have affected the performance of the different air cooling solutions.
To summarize the results, the V2 works really well as an active GPU cooler, although it doesn't win by a mile like the HR-03 PLUS.
