Installation

The installation method for the HR-03 Plus is very simple. All you got to do is fix four screws in the back plate or front plate depending on what orientation you want to install the cooler in.


First step of installation was to mount the I/O chip profile. This is done by applying some thermal paste to the chip and then placing the profile on top. The profile uses a smart push-pin mounting system. You just push the two spring loaded tabs through the card and the heat sink is secured firmly in place.


In order to cool down the power circuitry on the card you need to install three rectangular heat sinks on the 8800GTS (or if you have a 8800GTX/Ultra you need to install four). These heat sinks were fairly easy to install. All you got to do is make sure that they cover all of the small chips in the power area of the card.


When installing the RAM sinks for the HR-03 Plus you need to make sure that you install the flat ones opposite to the PCI Express connector. Failing to do so will mean that you can't install the main profile. On my 8800GTS 320 MB I only had to install two flat RAM sinks due to the fact that the 320 MB version only has two RAM chips in the area described. The RAM sinks are all fitted with a patch of high quality thermal adhesive which means that they are easy to install and should be quite efficient. When you are mounting them be sure not to touch the exposed thermal pad because it will damage its adhesive quality (something you don't want to do because it might cause them to fall off while the PC is running and damage the PCI card under your graphics card, and possibly overheat the VGA card).


It's a good thing to apply some thermal paste to the core of your graphics card before putting the back plate in place because it blocks some space around the GPU making it harder to smooth out the paste applied. The back plate is quite simple to assemble, all you got to do is fix four thumbscrews in place and mount four rubber grommets and a rubber pad underneath the center of the back plate.


For this review I will be using Thermalright's own thermal paste. This is very easy to work with and performs quite well compared to other generic thermal interface materials.


After mounting the heat sink I made sure that the fit between the cooler and the GPU was good. I was quite surprised to see how well the base of the cooler matches the GPU. They are exactly the same size which is unusual, i.e. the Zalman VF1000 has a much small contact area. On the picture above you can see how the base of the cooler has pushed out excess thermal paste even though I only applied a paper thin coat to the GPU.


After pulling off the base I checked the contact quality. As you can see it was really good. When I was pulling off the heat sink there was a small suction force and that is also visible when inspecting the thermal paste on the heatsink base.


On the picture above you can see that the back plate and front plate are fixed together via four thumb screws.


Installing this beast of a cooler was actually really easy compared to installing the much smaller Zalman VF1000. This is because the installation process is much simpler due to the design of the mounting mechanism. With the HR-03 Plus you only have to assemble the back plate which consists of ten items and then place the cooler on top along with the front plate. After this is done all that is left is to fix the entire sandwich in place with four finger operated bolts. Of course you also have to stick some RAM and MOSFET heat sinks in place, but that only takes about two minutes in total to do.


On the two pictures above you can see the cooler fitted with a Nexus Real Silent 92 mm fan. If you are going to use this cooler on an 8800-series card it's recommended that you use it in conjunction with a 92 mm fan. In order to see what the bottleneck for performance was I also tested this cooler with a massive 120 mm Papst fan mounted on it. Installing a 120 mm fan was actually pretty easy too. All I did was remove the two fan clips and then used some plastic strips to secure the fan in place. I used a total of four plastic strips going in between the heat pipes and through the holes in the base of the fan. On the side where the heat pipes end I just put a strip around it. This method of installation isn't that good if you are going to be transporting your PC around a lot.