Vantec iCEBERQ4 VGA Cooling Kit

Vantec iCEBERQ4 VGA Cooling Kit - Testing and Conclusion

The test setup is as follows...

• P4 2.4c stock clock
• Abit IC7 motherboard
• Sapphire ATI 9600XT
• Corsair PC3200 XMS RAM
• Chieftec Dragon style case
• 2x intake 80mm
• 2x exhaust 80mm
• 1x 90mm fan on Zalman PCI bracket

To test I used a Computer Nurse CPU Thermometer model number ETM-2006. I placed the sensor on the back of the card directly opposite where the GPU sits on the other side. I started by testing the stock cooler that I already had in place. To test I let 3DMark03, a graphics benchmarking suite, loop for an hour. This pushes the graphics card pretty much as far as it will go and therefore gets the temps as high as possible. The ambient temp in the case was 27 degrees Celsius, I tried to maintain the room temp throughout testing so that the case temp wouldn't change too much.

As you can see the iCEBERQ cooler has lower temps all around. The difference of course is most important when looking at the overclocking potential because I'm guessing most of you out there who would even bother to upgrade your video card's cooling are doing it to get a better OC. This leads directly to the next area of interest which of course would be the overclocking results. I used a program called ATI Tool to overclock the card and 3DMark03 to test for stability.

As indicated in the above chart, the iCEBERQ 4 allows for an extra 17mhz on the core and 4mhz on the memory. The core advantage is decent for such a minor upgrade and though the added memory performance is close to negligible I really wasn't expecting much. Mainly the reason for my low memory expectations is that although I changed four of the memory heat sinks the other four were the same ones I started out with.

Pro's:

• Cool Blue LED's
• Quality construction
• Excellent Mirror-like finish
• Cools like it should

Con's:

• Only 4 heat sinks
• Cheesy unhelpful instructions.

Overall I was very pleased with Vantec's iCEBERQ 4. Besides the shortage on memory heatsinks, and the useless instruction sheet everything was great. Anyone looking to upgrade their graphics card's cooling solution for a fair price would probably be hard pressed to find something better. If you want, you can check out Vantec's Website or SVC where this unit was purchased. Any questions or comments can be sent directly to me, or feel free to stop in the Fury-Tech Forums for a friendly chat.

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