Thermalright HR-03 Plus GPU cooler tested

X-bit Labs took a look at the Thermalright HR-03 Plus and tests how well it cools the GeForce 8800 GTS graphics cards.

It is indeed difficult to find an alternative cooler for the GeForce 8800 series among today’s air coolers. The G80 chip has an area of 484 sq. mm and its heat-spreader is even larger. Additional problems are provoked by the fastening mechanism since the mounting holes are placed atypically far away from each other and have a diameter of less than 1.5 millimeters. Added to that, the reference cooler of the GeForce 8800 series has contact not only with the GPU but also with the graphics card’s GDDR3 memory, NVIO chip and power elements all of which shouldn’t be left without cooling. Finding a cooler that would meet all these requirements is not easy.

Alternatives do exist, though. At the end of the last year we tested the Sparkle Calibre P880+ graphics card with a thermoelectric cooler that left a rather ambiguous impression on us. And today we offer you a review of yet another cooler, this time manufactured by Thermalright. The HR-03 Plus is a logical development of the Thermalright HR-03 model. It has more heat pipes (six instead of four) and a different fastening mechanism.

Check it out over here. The reviewer concludes that it delivers higher performance and is quieter than the stock cooler but also lists some negatives like the fact that it doesn't exhaust air out of your case likt the original 8800 GTS cooler does.