Hi there people and welcome to my short review on the Thermalright Shaman GPU cooler, Thermalright have kindly sent me a Shaman to test so today Im testing on the AMD Radeon HD6950 Graphics card. Test setup Asrock P55 PRO Motherboard Intel Core i5 750 CPU running at 4.00GHZ Gskill 4gb DDR3 ram running at 1600mhz CL7-7-7-18 Corsair H70 modified liquid cooling system Samsung Bluray Antec 900 case Monitor will allways be running at 1920x1080 resolution for the test. Hopefully this setup is a good reflection on your average PC gamers rig. Method Okay dokay what Im going to do here is focus more on temps and thresholds on the stock cooler first so you can get a feel for what a HD6950 runs like in gaming situations, be it in writing or screenshot, most here will know the cards limits by now but I wll just show this to be clear to all how these work under stress. Next I will get on to the unboxing and fitting of the shaman, I will try to be clear in pics to kinda show how easy this is to do. Then Im sure after that you will need something good to see, Thermalright have certainly shown they are very much into overkill cooling and will hopefully show you this running with some very healthy overclocks at temps and silence that you thought youd only see with water once all thats over with feel free to use this thread for discussion and comments, onto the review
This is my rigs insides as it was a week or two ago, the airflow was good as the antec 900 has nice fans on the front flowing air all over the inside of the case The shaman hadnt arrived yet but set to work on taking the card apart. There are 10 screws on the backplate that need taking out and 4 screws on the x clamp, remember once you do this you may have warranty problems but this is vendor specific so please contact them to see where you stand. Be carefull of the fan wire at the left bottom of the card, the wire is short but will lift off fine if your carefull. Then you will have a bare card, what you will need to do now is clean away all the thermal paste and get all the greasy residue off the RAM chips and voltage regulators, I use Isopropyl alcohol and cotton buds but there are lots of ways of getting this stuff off, take your time and double check! You should end up with something like this, the chip has a mirror shine and the ram chips are a dark black In your thermalright box you will have a bag of small ram sinks and vrm sinks,anti vibration strips, paste, manual and a nice thermalright sticker. You must stick the ram and vrm heatsinks on firmly and hold pressure for a few seconds before releasing them to ensure a good bond, if theres any greasy residue left at all the sinks wont stick so please be thorough! There is a nice tutorial on thermalrights main website. The main heatsink itself has a miror sheen on the base and is very flat, heres a promo pic to show you what I mean Its fitted using four thumb screws , four rubber washers and four regular nylon washers, its very simple to fit. After that its the fan. This is one of thermalrights own designs and I must give them a pat on the back for this fan, its exellent for shifting lots of air and is a surprisingly silent fan aswell, heres the specs Fan Specifications: Dimention: Length 160mm x Height 140mm x Width 26.5mm Weight : 140g Fan speed: 900~1300RPM (PWM) Noise: 19~21dBA Airflow: 56~73CFM Connector: 4 Pin (PWM Connector) and heres the finished article beastly right! lets go to the test
TESTING Righty I would like to first show you a couple of stock cooler temps so you have a good feel about the HD6950 unlocked card, some is written and some is screeny's untill I can figure out how to make charts method will be xx,xx,xx (temp 1, temp2, temp 3 gpuz) on metro bench maxxed 1920x1080 looping for 5 minutes or 3dmark test 4 looping for 5 mins, tbh both were pumping out very similar results, metro is beastly on hardware!! HD6950 stock speed unlocked avg idle : 44.5, 41.5, 47 celcius avg load: 83.5, 86, 92 celcius result= stable HD6950 DARING OC 950/1475mhz 1.260mv 60%fan avg idle : 42.5, 39.5, 44 celcius avg load: 87, 89, 96 celcius result= stable (note, at stock fan speed this test failed hard) feel the burn lol, that was very toasty and my ears are still ringing from the hoover fan hehe, I think its time for a few Shaman results eh? Shaman idle Right, so Ive been running the pc now for a couple of hours, its had a few backround apps running like fraps,utorrent, msi ab,steam. Your typical apps a gamer would run. Ive got an old school mercury thermometer and the reading right now is 17.5 celcius. So here is the first pic, its of my desktop with gpuz and msi ab. Hope the pic isnt to big. pretty good, 24, 18, 22 celcius, please note I hadnt checked the temp just before running the test and said 19 celcius, it had dropped to 17-17.5 celcius as id not allowed enough time for the thermometer to settle. Now I will run the same test as the stock oc config 950/1475 and see how we do max gpu temp of 47,45,49.5 celcius, not bad for metro maxed out but I thought lets torture the card a little more and loop 3d mark test 4 for a while at 720p, this is a real killer on the card and raises temps considerably, lovely stuff room temp has dropped to 17c I really tried to get it to make higher temps but it wasnt happening, 47.5, 45, 50 celcius was the very max temp running this test , safe to say this cooler is doing a fine job Onto the conclusion of this short review End of review and thoughts well well, the results speak for themselfs I would say, the card was failing at those clocks with a stock cooler and now they arent, a drop of 40c load is pretty shocking . I would like to say that there is a whole bunch of pro's to this cooler and the sheer brute force approach to cooling really pays off, hats off to thermalright for that. One small problem I am facing right now is that Thermalright havent seen enough of you guys saying you want one so they have decided not to make a VRM solution for the 69xx cards, all though Im assured by Thermalright and through my own tests the supplied heatsinks do their job very well and there is really nothing at all to worry about. The card supports most fermi cards and most cypress/cayman parts. As for the quality of the product Im ranking it very high, the finish on this cooler is superb as is the packaging, accessories and documentation. Fitting was a doddle and shouldnt pose problems for anyone, if you do have problems drop me a PM I am happy to help . Clearance could be an issue for CFX/SLI users but Ive been googling and have found a few 12mm height 120mm fans that would give enough space and clearance, I do not have a card to test but if I do I will add to this review. Also I must note that thermalright do another cooler that would work really well coupled with the shamn, the Thermalright Spitfire, I may have one in to test very soon, watch this space The price, well at around £50 its at the high end for air cooling but water blocks cost £70 upwards so Im not arguing tell the truth for this price you are getting a very high quality product that feels and performs as though its worth much more, coupled with the fact its almost a certainty that it will fit your future cards then it is worth every penny IMO. Hope you enjoyed the review, if you want to know anything more just let me know 22/2/2011 davetheshrew
Nice! I just install it on my 5870. Let me know if you connect the fan to the card or the motherboard. If you connected it to the card, please let us know how you did so. I know the connectors are different, but there has to be a way to connect it to the card and not the motherboard.
there has to be an adapter that we can use. i feel like i'm not getting accurate readings from the card by using the mobo connectors.
ok, those idle shaman temps make no sense at all... if your ambient temps are being regulated and controlled at a steady 23C as you claim in the other thread, then there's no way you should be getting lower than 23C anywhere on the card are those the real idle temps after idling in windows for a good few mins to wait until temps stabilize? are your ambient temps really controlled? if you want to write a good review, you will need to show the delta between ambient air temp and the card temp. it's the only real way of determining the performance of a cooler imho
You should have chosen Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus instead. Read why: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/thermalright-shaman_5.html#sect3
any particular reason why ? [edit] nevermind, just saw the link you added. i do like the way the vrm heatsink is bolted to the card [edit2] nope, just realised, they used the vrm heatsink from a Scythe Setsugen cooler :bang: Kinda daft thing to do imo as we don't see a true representation of the AC cooler standard config.
my thermometre this morning is reading 17c, throuchout the day it gets warmer, at night its around 22-23 in my room, Ive re adjusted my case since and results would be different now, sorry I dont have nor can afford an AC unit so finding a constant temp isnt going to happen Pyr0, I should have been more clear. Your right btw, at the moment everythings different, my temps now are 24.5,19.5,24 celcius, room temp right now is 17c, whats the math pyr0?
is that with the card sat idle in windows for 15 mins or so so the card warms up and temps settled? if your ambient temps aren't controlled/consistent then each time you show the card temps, just show the ambient temp too. the delta is just the difference between the two figures.
if you go here: http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/18/accelero-xtreme-plus.html?c=2182 in the table bottom right, you see 6950/6970 owners need to pruchase the VR001 set of heatsinks. there are no bolt on heatsinks there [edit] ??? sorry, not sure what happened earlier, but i must have gotten the reviews i read mixed up. i'm sure i saw one earlier and they showed a 6970 with the arctic cooling fitted, but the setsugen vrm sink... but still, you are comparing different cards which have different heatsinks for the VRMs and the AC heatsinks for the 6970 do not have a bolt on VRM
thats with the pc running all night and me going on a few websites this morning and watching iplayer for an hour. Ok mate thanks for the advice, Im going to record room temp and put it down every time from now on, thanks EDIT: on reflection my data is useless now, Im retesting the whole thing, shaman only tests now as Im not prepared to bang on the stock cooler and start all the way from scratch, might be a day or two extra for completion of this review, sorry guys
@ Pyr0 Ive recoded room temps this time so all should be well I didnt include max OC, Im saving that one untill others post results
