Thermalright Spitfire 6 GPU Heatsink for Radeon HD 5850/5870 Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
2,089 words · ~10 min read
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so big thanks to Thermal R for sending us uh the sample that we're going to
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have a look at today today I have and you won't be able to tell from the front
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because this uses thermal W's trademark plain brown box packaging thermal R has
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always kind of said well we're not really about the Box we're more about
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the what's inside the box so here we've
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got just simple text on the side this is their Spitfire VGA cooler and I've also
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got one of their vrm R5 accessories for
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it so why don't we start with let's start with the add-on piece
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just to kind of shake things up you know why look at the main thing when we're
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actually you know looking at both in the long run or something first of all we
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get a thermal right ultimate cooling solution sticker inside the box and
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we're probably going to have one of those in each box would be my guess okay
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then we get a quick assembly package so this gives you what uh what accessories
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you can accept or you can expect in order to assemble your vrm R5 now as you
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might have already guessed the vrm R5 is for cooling the vrm on a Radeon 5 Series
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so this is for the Radeon 5870 and you can see that we've got a
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quick exploded view of how to install it it actually looks really simple so
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you've got a couple clips that appear to be for fans and then you've got a couple
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of screws that go in from the back and uh yeah well that's fairly
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straightforward thanks for that okay why don't we have a look at the actual
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cooler itself okay it starts to look less simple all of a sudden here but
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that's okay we'll get into that when we when we get to it so I'm not going to snap this open
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now because it looks actually quite well sealed and there's a bunch of little
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Parts in here but we've got as they outlined here three thumb screws three
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washers and then two thermal strips okay and let's have a look at the
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cooler itself because this is sort of the business part of thermal right's
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business is coolers that is a big piece
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of foam huh why don't we unbox the foam
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today just the foam so what they've done is
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they've put together some foam and then they made a hole in it and that no I'm
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just kidding that protects the cooler itself so this is the vrm
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R5 and uh this is actually yeah this is
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kind of amazing because this piece is
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dedicated purely to cooling the voltage Regulators I mean when you consider how
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small and puny the cooler that sits on the vrm on a stock card is and you see
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think that this is actually designed to cool that this this whole thing it's uh
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it's pretty cool so here let's have a look at the menu at the um at the
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diagram they've done here so when you've actually got your card installed in your
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system this is going to stick up this way so any case air flow that's coming
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through your case generally speaking it's going to be coming front to back is
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going to have to blow through these fins in order to be exhausted so that's what
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thermal R is going for with their design so why don't we have a look at the
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actual Spitfire and then we will go from there into what
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it'll kind of look like you know I wish I had a 5870 to show it to you with but
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um I don't you know what maybe we'll spend a little bit more time on this guy
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first okay so they're using nickel plated nickel plated fins here and
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they've got a couple of nickel plated copper heat pipes that are running one
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from like right under one of the contact strips here and then the other one is a
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little bit to the side of the other contact strip you can see it right here
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but based on the fact that you're going to have excellent heat transfer from
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from one part of a of an aluminum structure to another part these heat
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pipes are both going to be able to carry a lot of heat up to these fins here so
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okay that pretty much covers it okay let's have a look at the Spitfire itself
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so we get another sticker and then we get another assembly package so you can
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see there are a lot more parts included with this one so why don't we why don't
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we keep that on standby and then what I'll do is I'll show you each of the
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included Parts as we go through it so in still ation
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manual okay installation of the support
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bars oh that's interesting okay so
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thermal right has actually included support bars because they're afraid that
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this uh that this heat sync is going to make well not they're afraid but rather
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their concern for their end users that installing this might make it so that
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their video card becomes quite heavy so you can see how large it is once it's
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actually installed on a video card so they have provided provided with the
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cooler a way to actually brace it against a couple of the standoffs that
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your motherboard screws into your chassis with so by extension what you're
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doing this is actually pretty cool is you are bracing this cooler against your
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chassis so if you're actually needing to move your computer while you have the
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Spitfire installed here I had you looking at that tiny picture there you go so during installation with the
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supporting Rod is blocked by any of the components you have a metal rod
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installed TX mounting holes so cool they've included a couple sort of extra
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ways for you to make sure that you can install this that is terrific okay
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moving on here is the installation guide
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so here's the exploded view where they show you oh here's the step by- step on
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the back so you insert the multiple thread why don't we pull this out so we
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can at least have a look at the included accessories
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first okay that is a big pile of accessories
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so this is the assembly package I'm going to see if I can get this open tidy
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here without making too much of a
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mess yeah I'm going to pull the old pen trick
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okay there we
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go so the biggest thing in here is the support bars and those are um let's see
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what they're made of cuz my guess is going to be like steel or something like
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that because it'd have to be quite strong so here here they
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are those are neat so they've got a a Groove in them so you can actually
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adjust them depending on exactly where you want to put the yeah yeah that's
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interesting so you use this one side and then that screws into the top of the
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Spitfire and then this side just kind of adjusts to wherever you need to fasten
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it so that's very cool so those are the support bars next we have uh fan mounts
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so you've got your standard uh wire clip fan mounts next we we have two more pieces
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of the support bar structure so these can be used to screw into the
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motherboard standoff holes and then you can actually attach the Spitfire itself
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to these okay next we have all of the
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mounting hardware that we need in order to install the Spitfire onto the card so
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let me see what we've got here all these thumb
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screws H you know I've never actually tried to
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figure out VGA cooler mounting on camera
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and it is proving to be quite difficult so I might not get too much further into
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the mounting unless I do a dedicated video to about mounting this particular
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cooler so why don't we just have a look at all the other accessories that are included so you got your mounting plates
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and then you've also got some included thermal compound and then you've also
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got little heat sinks for the RAM as well as for the some of the voltage
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regulation modules on the back so I guess if you don't have this particular
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accessory you can also use this so RAM
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heat sink a RAM heat sink B and then
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what are the other ones these six pieces are
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seven P seven RAM heat sink see oh no so
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they are all for RAM so you do need the vrm cooling accessory so let's have a
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look at this Spitfire wow this thing's as big as a CPU Cooler that's the first
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thing I noticed about it it's got six heat pipes so here I'll get the
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cameraman to get in close to this thing and have a look first let's get all the
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foamies taken off of it uh oh it looks
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like these these either stay on or no no these come out okay so these foamies
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also come out and uh wow the structure
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of this thing is actually quite quite unique so there's a lot of Separation in
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between the dedicated fins to each one
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of these heat pipes and then they've got one solid appears to be steel plate at
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the top holding it all in place so that none of them are going to move from
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their from their normal structure so as you'd expect from a thermal right
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product the bottom is based uh the bottom base the base is lapped very
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smooth and then you've got six heat pipes all terminated right here so you
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can actually Mount this and you can see that this base is lapped as well you can
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either mount it to your graphics card this way and then you've got your GPU
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making contact here or you can mount it to your graphics card this way and
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you've got your GPU making contact to this side so that's pretty cool and that's one of the reasons that
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thermalite wouldn't have been able to do a heat pipe direct touch design because
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they wanted to make sure that you have that flexibility because I mean face it
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this thing is huge it's not going to fit just any old way in every case in the
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world so why don't we have a look at where the heat pipes all make contact so
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you can see these are welded or rather soldered in and then they each come out
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to a dedicated fin Arrangement and these
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fins are actually pretty unique because normally you can kind of see right
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through the fins on a cooler but they've got these um what they've done is
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they've taken each Fin and they've actually bent they've bent them so that
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you get more surface area per fan
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blowing down on it although it would make it more restrictive now why they
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would have made a design decision like that I'm not sure but I think the
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results for this cooler speak for itself I've seen it installed on Radeon 58 70s
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and it's dropped temperatures by over 30° over the stock cooler without even
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running an extreme fan on it so thermal R actually had a recommended fan that
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they uh sent to me as well and I'm hoping I'll be able to do an
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installation video but it's the exilent 140 so it can accept up to a 140 mm fan
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anyway thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the thermal
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right Spitfire as well as their vrm
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cooling accessory for it