Zalman Z-Machine GV1000

I went to KL for conference on 16th and 17th July for the company sake. After first day conference i visited Low Yat Plaza (a must-visit place for me everytime went KL) for a VGA cooler since my PowerColor HD4850 having overheating issue under full load. Before spending the money, I have done some research on various make of VGA cooler available in the market, but surprisingly i found the Zalman Z-Machine GV1000 which is in my first buying list. Here we go for today protagonist.

Figure 1: Zalman Z-Machine GV1000 in the box.

The box just included simple description of the product and it ain't informative for compatibility of graphic card, and this is critical, but for sure i knew it support my graphic card since i have did the research.

Figure 2: All the components out of the box.

Preparation of installation, take out every component out of the box.
Basically it contains:

• One (1) VGA Cooler
• Eight (8) RAM Heatsinks
• Four (4) Nipples
• Four (4) Fixing Nuts
• Four (4) Fixing Nuts for SLI/CrossFire
• One (1) PVC Washer Plate
• Eight (8) Rubber Rings
• Four (4) Springs
• One (1) Thermal Grease
• One (1) Fan Controller (FAN MATE 2)
• One (1) Cable for FAN MATE 2
• One (1) Double-Sided Tape (to attach FAN MATE 2)
• One (1) User’s Manual

Figure 3: Closer look of the VGA cooler.

The heatsink has 4 individual heatpipe from the conduction area, whole unit of it was made in pure copper. The cooling fan was transparent with LED illumination for the emphasis of enthusiastic.

Figure 4: My graphic card PowerColor HD4850.

PowerColor cooler wasn't efficiency, it could raise the temperature from 50°C to 80°C just in 20 sec under full load.

Figure 5: The Zalman cooler installed on my HD4850.

After more than hour of installation work, the cooler finally installed on my graphic card. Why it takes so long to get done? Yeah, thanks to the 8 ram module heatsinks, I have to remove it slowly with stationary knife and then wipe off the adhesive remainder of the thermal adhesive tape. Generally the rest of installtion work could be finish within 15 minutes.

Figure 6: The Red LED light of cooling fan in the dark.

Close shot on the running cooling fan red light in the dark. The noise level on 5V quiet mode definitely very quiet as most silent fan do, and the full speed 12V wasn't very loud as expected, the noise level just like normal non ball-bearing fan noise.

Figure 7: The graphic card installed and running.

Overview of my motherboard after the installation. CPU with green orb and graphic card with red orb... The cables still in a mess and the IDE cable was the most troublesome to make tidy up.

Figure 8: GPU-Z showing the GPU info.

The last job get to be done was the performance testing, overclock the GPU clock to 660MHz from 635MHz (normal HD4850 default clock is 625MHz) and slightly increase Memory clock to 1000MHz.

Figure 9: 30 mins testing with ATiTool and GPU-Z monitoring.

Let's see the result of testing, the ATiTool runs 30 minutes, the Zalman cooler was doing great job remain the GPU temp below 60°C and the GPU mem controller temp below 70°C under full load and the room temperature around 27°C. Lastly, the performance of the cooler proofed to be great and the noise level on full speed wasn't loud as expected, it worth for the coins as it bring such stability to the card.