John Gillooly goes into stealth mode.
It is a popular enough model that both Sapphire and HIS are using them as standard on particular models of RADEON X800 series cards. In addition, there is a model available at the same price for GeForce 6800 series cards. As such, it does offer certain advantages.
Previous experience with large VGA coolers like those made by Zalman has made us wary of fiddliness in the Atomic labs, but the VGA Silencer surprised us with how easy it was to attach, the actual mounting can nearly all be done by hand, with a screwdriver needed purely for tension. It also doesn't weigh as much as the Zalman coolers do, even if its aesthetics aren't as great (they are light years above the flouro orange model used on Sapphire's TOXIC card though).
One interesting aspect is that unlike the screaming FX Flow coolers of NVIDIA days, or even ABIT's infinitely more elegant OTES cards, the cooler sucks air into the case rather than vent it. This means that cooler air is flowing over the heatsink; however, it also means that it is introducing more warmed air into your system, so be sure you have good exhaust. It is also against conventional wisdom to have a rear intake, so if your case is on the warm side keep an eye on temps.
It does allow clocks to be pushed higher than the normal cooler but not significantly, and also while it is whisper quiet, the stock ATI cooler doesn't do too bad a job of keeping noise levels down, although the benefits will be more obvious if you are using the GeForce 6800 variant. If you really want to keep the noise level of your PC down however, it is a very cheap option.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012