ZEROtherm Hurricane HC92 Cu 8800

Introduction

Introduction

If there were one thing that we could change for NVIDIA's popular G92 based GeForce 8800 GT, it would definitely be the high temperatures on the reference board. One would think that moving to 65 nanometers process technology for the new core would result in lower temperatures but while that is true generally, the differences between the 80nm G80 core and the 65nm G92 core are not merely restricted to a die shrink. Given the opportunity, NVIDIA has actually squeezed more transistors onto the smaller die and while they were at it, why not increase the clock speeds too? Finally, with the GeForce 8800 GT sporting a slim anorexic cooler unlike the dual-slot versions on the G80 graphics cards, it's not exactly rocket science to figure out why temperatures are higher.

Of course, high temperatures and the usual overclocking penchant by enthusiasts meant that third party coolers are the big winners here and even graphics cards vendors have been quick to include these non standard coolers for their own retail versions. Previously, we have seen a Zalman assisted overclocked GeForce 8800 GT from Gigabyte doing extremely well in our temperature tests. Next up, we have another cooler from a Korean firm, APACK that aims to compete with its compatriot in this arena with its ZEROthem Hurricane Cu 8800 VGA cooler, which as its name suggest, is designed for the GeForce 8800 series. Whether that includes the newer GeForce 8800 GT and how well it fairs is what we'll be finding out after the specifications below: