Date: March 20th, 2006
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Zalman USA
<--SHOP FOR COMPUTER COOLING EQUIPMENT HERE
PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
The first step in installing the FS-V7 is to uninstall the stock cooler from the graphics card. For this installation, the victim will be my eVGA e-GeForce 7800 GT CO 256MB graphics card. After removing the fan and heatsinks, seen in the background in the above photo, the GPU and RAM chips were cleaned with alcohol to remove any residue from the stock thermal interface material. This card came from the manufacturer with a copper heatsink and a very loud fan. It also comes overclocked at 470/1100 MHz (GPU/Memory frequency), up from the 400/1000 reference model.
Note: Installation instructions, an installation movie and other useful information is available HERE.
The stock parts weigh in at 254 grams (that's over a half-pound, folks). We're saving almost 70g here.
Now we can begin installing the mounting components and ramsinks. Check the chart for the placement of the nipples for your particular application. The nipples are assembled on the mounts with a rubber o-ring on the side facing the board (red arrows) and snugged up. Do Not Overtighten! Now, apply a thin layer of the included thermal grease to the GPU and attach the ramsinks. (For consistency, I used Arctic Silver 5 in this installation, but the included TIM should be fine.)
The ramsinks must be installed before the cooler. The surface of the RAM chips must be very clean in order for the sinks to adhere properly. Zalman states in the manual that the bonding strength of the thermal adhesive on the sinks will reach 90% only after 24 hours curing time. Until that time, the sinks can easily be knocked off the chips. Consequently, care should be taken when handling the card after the sinks are attached.
The cooler can then be placed onto the card, making sure that the studs on the nipples line up with the mounting holes and the GPU chip is in the center of the cooler base. Now flip the card and cooler over.
Now place a PVC washer (top arrow) over the stud and place the springs on the nuts. The nut/spring assemblies can then be screwed onto the studs. Tighten the nuts a few turns at a time in a criss-cross pattern until they are snugged up to the board. Do Not Overtighten! Installation is very simple and requires no tools.
Looks pretty nice, eh! The fan blows air through the fins and over the surface of the card, cooling not only the memory, but other components as well.
