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When I booted I could definitely hear the difference. I've been working on quietening the system down for a few months (panaflo fans, QuietPC HD enclosures, water cooling) and it was still noisy. I've been unable to single out any individual cause of the noise, it seemed to be just a compounding of noise from different devices. So when I started it up, I was pleasantly surprised. On the low setting, the VGA silencer is silent. On the high setting, it's no louder than anything else and I definitely feel more calm sitting at my desk than before.

I overclocked the card by about 5 or 10% and played a little UT2004 Demo, then set it running 3D Mark looped. I did my duty while writing this article by going to the bar for several hours and leaving these tests running :)

Everything was fine when I got back, so we can assume the cooler was doing its job. The system temperature stayed around 36C, previously however if I had started working the graphics card hard (even at stock speed), it would have brought the system temperature up by a few degrees. I put this down the the fact that the fan exhausts air out the back of the case, rather than re-cirulating it. This stops the case temperature from increasing. You can definitely feel how warm the air coming out is. I think that with a little adjustment to what my case fans are doing (this thing has completely changed the usual airflow) I could get it running cooler still.

The stock speed on my card is 325/310 (GPU/RAM). With this is I was able to get to 370/350 before getting artefacts in 3DMark 03. On the old heatsink I would start seeing artefacts about 350MHz GPU core. At those speeds I would just scrape ~4990 in 3dMark 2003. Now I can get ~5310. At stock I barely break 4700 so it's a fairly good increase. For a few extra quid, I've helped extend the life of my card so I can comfortably run Doom 3, Half Life 2 and the like (when they eventually come out), so it's definitely worth it.

Click for enlarged screen shot.

Pros:

• Looks cool.
• Improves thermal management.
• Runs a lot quieter than stock cooling and has different settings.
• Well made, you can see the attention to detail like the way the power cable is held neatly in place.
• Fits most high-end Radeons and GeForce 3 GTS cards (Some say it doesn't fit the 9600 Non-PRO)
• Dirt cheap.
• Excellent instructions: full colour photos covering all 10 steps.
  

Cons:

• Takes up a whole expansion slot (and then some).
• Puts extra stress on the card and the AGP slot
• A bit fiddly to install.
• Comes with thermal paste that doesn't seem very trust worthy.
• Will void your warranty - but this card's over a year old now anyway.
• Finish on the surface could use some work.

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