Re: CoolerMaster CoolViva!

CoolViva Close Up

First off, all major parts of the kit are aluminum, save the heatpipe itself. While copper tends to best aluminum in heat disappation, it's also quite a bit heavier. As the CoolViva's weight is noticeable, I'd have to say that making the same kit out of pure copper would've made it even heavier. I suspect that having an all-copper unit would've made the CoolViva dangerously heavy, but this is just a theory.

The most noticeable part of the CoolViva is the blue heatsink plates. Both have a groove along the long edges where the supplied fan clips on. While I don't know if CoolerMaster sells the CoolViva fans separately, you could easily attach another one on the backside of the card.

There are two heatsinks supplied with the kit, both are, as previously mentioned, aluminum. CoolerMaster has a fairly smooth surface on the first one, but some tweakers might want to lap it for a smoother surface. The second heatsink is for the back of the card. I hadn't really thought much about these VGA heatpipe coolers, but what CoolerMaster did makes sense. With all the solder points on the back of the card, a big chunk of metal could easily mean an extra crispy video card by shorting a number of them all at once. Having a non-conductive surface is essential to this, or any similar kit's usefulness.

A 60mm fan is included in a custom plastic bracket that snaps on to one of the blue heatsinks. However, putting this on is optional. I did install the fan, and it's silent, or at least very near to it, which is good news for those of you who want a silent or very, very quite PC.

The last major piece is the heatpipe, and it should be long enough for any card out their today. The second pic is the heatpipe beside a GeForce 4 Ti4600, which is a massive card. While CoolerMaster is unspecific about which cards it works on, aside from nVidia and ATi cards, I don't see a problem with it fitting most, if not all cards.