COOLINK GFXCHILLA Heatsink, Cooling Down Our Hardware

Coolink has been making inroads in the market for PC heatsink components. It now seeks to impress us with a cooling system for the least-cool part of a computer, the GPU. Let’s see how its new entry checks out.

THE COOLINK GFXCHILLA AND CHILLARAMIC: “COOLING DOWN OUR HARDWARE.”

Introduction

Coolink International Corporation was established in 1996. It specializes in refrigeration and is well known in the industry. Through the years, Coolink has designed and manufactured many high-performance heatsinks. Headquartered in Taiwan, it decided to explore new markets, bringing its products to Europe in 2005. The company stands for performance, excellent quality, and very attractive prices.

Today, Coolink is growing significantly worldwide. Its division that produces products to cool PC components has grown substantially, along with its sister company, Noctua. It is increasingly introducing new products for various types of hardware. One of these is the GFXChilla, a high-performance heatsink for video cards, which takes up only one PCI slot, providing maximum performance in a small space. One important requirement for a heatsink to perform well is the thermal paste that is added to conduct heat to it. Knowing this, Coolink has made a ceramic thermal paste to compete in this market, which it calls Chillaramic.

First Look

The GFXChilla is a high-performance heatsink that only takes up one slot, in addition to the one occupied by the video card. It features four powerful high-performance heatpipes made from pure C110 copper (chrome-plated annealed copper) to transfer heat better. They are connected by a 39mm² square (0.06 square inch) sheet of pure C110 copper, which is also the base that makes contact with the video card’s GPU chip. On the other side of the heatpipes are 65 well-placed and well-soldered aluminum fins that support two high-performance fans (80mm L x 10mm W, or 3.1″ L x 0.4″ W). Thanks to their bearings, they are very silent (Coolink’s fans have generally been extremely quiet, with excellent airflow).

The GFXChilla’s packaging is good. In front, we can see the two blue fans, with the heatsink underneath them. The back of the package displays the unit’s specifications and measurements in a way that gives a good general idea of the product.

The GFXChilla comes with various accessories, which covered all of our video cards’ cooling needs. These include 6 standard RAM heatsinks, 4 low-profile RAM heatsinks, 4 large voltage regulator heatsinks, 4 small voltage regulator heatsinks, thermal paste, mounting screws, a 4-pin voltage adaptor, tape to protect the GPU, and a user’s manual.

We should also note the benefits of Coolink’s Chillaramic thermal paste. It combines high performance and ease of use, because its ceramic nanoparticles achieve high heat transfer. It also doesn’t conduct electricity, unlike other thermal pastes. It comes in a highly visible package in which you can easily see the 10 grams of Chillaramic paste, as well as some of its specifications and advantages.

Installation

Installing the GFXChilla is a snap, requiring only a Phillips screwdriver. Remove the thermal tape that protects each memory heatsink. The GFXChilla comes with the necessary screws (depending on the video card). Cover your video card’s adjustment holes with the included plastic washers. Then insert the Phillips nuts that come with the GFXChilla, and you’re done.

Test Setup

Tests:

3D Ozone Furmark V 1.6.5

Far Cry 2

We let the 3Dozone FURMARK version V 1.6.5 benchmark run for one hour to apply significant graphic stress to the Foxconn 9800GT OC Edition GPU and provide a stiff test for the GFXChilla and the Chillaramic thermal paste. The results are shown below.

We played video games for one hour to verify the effect on the temperature.

We ran the Chillaramic test with a C2D E8500 processor and Swiftech Apogee GTX waterblock. The block was placed on the processor with three different thermal pastes:

Chillaramic

Noctua NT-H1

Arctic Silver Ceramic

Results

In general, the Coolink GFXChilla performed quite well in competition with one of the best VGA heatsinks on the market, the Zalman VF1000Cu. One strong point for the GFXChilla is the very low sound level generated by its two fans. Even at the highest RPM, no sound was perceptible, while the Zalman VF1000Cu is very noisy at all RPM levels.

The GFXChilla with Chillaramic thermal paste is a great combination, which even surpassed the Zalman VF1000Cu with Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste.

There’s nothing more to say about the thermal paste comparison. The Chillaramic ranks very highly. Sometimes we tend to forget how important having the right paste can be.

Conclusions

GFXChilla

The Coolink system performed its thermal dissipation task very well on our hardware. It’s very pleasant to be able to rely on a new brand for this important function.

The GFXChilla impressed us with the its advantages over the competition: excellent heat dissipation and transfer, its size and design, and its effective and extremely quiet ventilation system. It’s a welcome addition to the marketplace.

The final score is 98 out of 100 owls and we give the “Coolink GFXChilla Heatsink” our Editors Choice Award.

Chillaramic

We were astonished by the heat transfer effectiveness of the Chillaramic thermal paste. It’s even more impressive because it equals the performance of the competition from the largest players in this market.

The final score is 100 out of 100 owls and we give the “Coolink Chillaramic Thermal Paste” our Editors Choice Award.

Translated by: Ed Winograd

Written by: Jorge Alberto Corona