ABIT OTES Ti 4200 8X - Cooling
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Cooling
Well, for those of you who don't know what the OTES is, the following is a description of what it is... OTES stands for Outside thermal Exhaust System. It is a unique cooling solution using heatpipe technology, copper fins, and a 7000 RPM fan to more effectively cool your GPU core and expel the hot air out the back of your case to keep the rest of your system from suffering the ill effects of a hot graphics chip. Despite the speed of this fan, I didn't feel it was overly noisy. I couldn't hear a difference between this and the G4-VGA cooler from Thermal Take. Of course, that could be due to the screaming 75 CFM 80mm fan on my ALPHA.
The OTES Unit itself is quite large, requiring the double size back panel to accommodate it. The fan is thick and wide. The unit is attached to the card with a nice little 4 point shiny metal hold down thing. Said shiny metal thing has a squishy pad to keep it from tearing up the traces on the back of the card. A generous amount of thermal grease is between the chip and the all copper HSF. The copper is quite well buffed. The shine was so great I was even able to capture a reflection of a coin despite my poor skills with a camera and the sub par macro abilities it has.
As far as the cooling on the RAM goes, there is nothing to speak of. All the TSOP chips are bare. Not only that, but the plastic shroud of the OTES obstructs the area over some of the chips, so if you had ideas in your head about installing some Ramsinks, such as the excellent ones produced by Tweakmonster, forget about them now. Its a non-issue.
Installation
Well, this is an interesting little bit... Installation is no big deal, with one small exception. If you have something installed in your first PCI slot, you are out of luck. Move it. Not only is the OTES HSF huge, making it impossible to use that first PCI slot, but the back plate takes up 2 PCI holes in your case. This really isn't such a surprise when you think about it. Since ABIT included the DVI and TV out in addition to the AGP interface and the exhaust port, a lot of real estate is a necessity. Below is a shot of the two cards together, showing how "thick" the ABIT OTES is.
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