Cold Cathode Card Cooler XT Review
(Page 1 of 4 )
The Card Cooler XT is a set of heavy duty fans on a mounting bracket, which is designed to sit in the middle of your case and circulate air over your video and PCI cards. It’s an extremely simple idea that may be better for most people then using aftermarket GPU heatsinks. Read on to see how well the cooler brings down case and video card temps.
The Card Cooler has been around since 1999. The company’s products have evolved quite a bit since then. They used to sell card coolers built from two black 80mm fans mounted together horizontally that blew over the top couple PCI slots. All reviews of these older coolers sound extremely positive.
Since then, the cooler has gone through some serious redesigning. Today we have a new and made-over card cooler. Instead of having the two fans set up horizontally, they are now vertical and slightly offset. They also seem to have grown quite a bit, now using quiet 120mm fans. There is also a sweet ice-blue cold cathode light to make your case glow bright in the dark. When the package arrived in the mail, I was ready to see how the new card cooler compares to my expectations from reading about the old one.
The package came with plenty of bubble wrap all around it, and it seemed well secured in there. Packaged like this, I think the set of fans is quite safe in shipping.
There was surprisingly little extra stuff in the box. It came with just the fan apparatus and a sheet of paper that describes the installation process. There’s no mention of power requirements, fan speed, air flow, or noise levels. It would be nice, though certainly not necessary, to mention these statistics on the installation sheet. Of course, the company does provide the specifications on their website. These figures are only for one fan, and the card cooler consists of two:
- Rotation Speed: 2800~3200RPM
- Noise Level: 22dB(A)
- Air Flow: 42.31CFM
- 120mm Fan Input Voltage:11.2~12.2VDC
- CCFL Light Input Voltage: 12V
- Brightness: 28,000 cd/m2
- Life Span: 15,000+ Hours
The cooler itself comes in this pocket of bubble wrap. Read on to see it unwrapped and installed.
Next: Installation >>
More PC Cooling Articles
More By Developer Shed
