Introduction

From the manufacturer Arctic Cooling:

Packaging

Box contents:

• VGA cooler with fan and screws
• Backside cooling plate
• Thermal Paste
• PCI slot cover
• Instruction manual

Arctic Cooling is the first video card cooler manufacturer to use a heatsink base manufactured from copper. The following pictures show that the surface is not really that flat, especially towards one side, and there is roundness near the corners.



The version we tested has an improved backside compared to the first models:


The new version is the shiny one in the back, it's no longer taking fingerprints and contact with the memory chips has been improved. Cooling performance has remained the same.

Installation

Installation is very easy and takes less than 10 minutes.



Additional ramsinks are not necessary because the ATI Silencer 4 cools the memory as well. What I noticed is that contact with one memory chip on the backside is not good, see the following picture:



The gap is about 0.1mm (a sheet of paper just fits into it) but it is still there. A solution to this is to use more thermal paste or a thermal tape. The other seven memory chips have full contact.