When ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards started selling, there appeared significant interest to VGA coolers for overclockers and regular mainstream users who do not intend to overclock for any reason. In fact, this interest is quite natural, because the reference coolers on these graphics accelerators turned out not particularly good, to put it mildly. Although the default Radeon HD 4870 cooler is efficient enough, it is too noisy. However, the cooler on Radeon HD 4850 is beyond all criticism. Its only advantage is its compact size, so it wouldn’t block the slot next to the graphics card. Although it is not a serious plus, because the slot next to the PCI-E is usually empty anyway. Otherwise, the cooler is very loud, ineffective and doesn’t suit for any overclocking.

Nevertheless, Titan, Scythe and Arctic Cooling launched their new cooling solutions that we are going to talk about today not only because the reference coolers for Radeon HD 4870 and HD 4850 had to be replaced, but also because they felt like expanding their product range in this pretty specific segment. Remember that we tested universal graphics card coolers back in February, which is eight months ago. It suggests that while processor coolers take all the attention there is not much going on in the VGA cooling market these days. Today we will try to make up for it and offer you a detailed discussion and tests of the three new cooling solutions for graphics accelerators.

You can read the entire article at X-bit Labs.