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GPack III Xtreme
Date Reviewed: September 14, 2000
Reviewed By: Jason Rabel
Company URL: http://www.millisec.com
Cost: $30 USD

First Impressions:
I'm here to say that Millisec's
GPack III Xtreme has set a new standard in video card cooling. The heat sinks
are custom made from Alpha, so you know they are top notch quality. The fan used
for video cooling is a double ball bearing Delta 50mm pumping out 16.25CFM.
Included to attach everything to your video cooler is two Berquist thermal pads
(also top quality), and a Chromerics T412 pad which outperforms all other
thermal pads, and even most thermal compounds! For those of you who like to see a
list, here's what you get for your $30 of hard earned green:
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1 - VIce III Xtreme Video Cooler
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8 - VIceMem Video Memory Coolers
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2 - Berquist Thermal Pads
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1 - Chromerics T412 Pad
***Please note, the inclusion of the Chromerics
pad is a very recent change at Millisec and the kit we got for review was before
they stocked those, so temperatures *should* be even lower than what our numbers
show.
Installation:
Installation was pretty simple. Removing your
existing stock heat sink from your video without damaging the card will probably the
hardest task as some companies like to epoxy the damn buggers on there good.
First thing was to mount the Video Cooler, I applied one of the thermal pads on
the back of the cooler first, then proceed to apply it to the GPU. I was kind of
afraid that the VIce III Video Cooler wouldn't fit because of so many other
things sticking up around the GPU, but it managed to squeeze between all the
obstructions without any modification whatsoever. If you want to be stingy with
your thermal pads (to use for something later), you can always cut a chunk to fit
the GPU and mount it on there first, then stick the cooler on, but Millisec
gives you more than ample thermal pads to get the job done. Mounting the memory
coolers was simple too, I just cut pieces out to the size of the memory, and
stuck the coolers on. The Berquist thermal pads give excellent adhesion, once
you apply it to a surface, it's on there good.
If You Can't Take The Heat:
To give you an idea of the versatility of the
GPack III, I used both a Geforce 256 DDR board, AND a Geforce 2 MX board. I also have
included temperatures comparing it to the Tennmax Lasagna BGA cooler. Reason
for using both the old school Geforce and the newer MX board is two fold: First,
many people have the older first generation Geforce cards which put out an
extremely insane amount of heat. Second, I feel the MX board is going to be (if
it's not already) very popular since the cost is very reasonable (As low as
$110) compared to the GF2 GTS (We won't even go there on cost). I also have a
Geforce 2 MX that comes stock with a little heat sink that I threw in for
comparison. Ambient temp was about 79° F.
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Card / Cooler
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Idle
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Full Load
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Geforce DDR w/GPack III
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93.0° F
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99.3° F
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Geforce DDR w/Tennmax
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116.6° F
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130.3° F
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Geforce 2 MX w/GPack III
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83.2° F
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87.0° F
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Geforce 2 MX w/Tennmax
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94.5° F
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96.8° F
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Geforce 2 MX w/Plain Heat Sink
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109.8° F
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113.5° F
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Scotty, what does this mean? Well Jim, let me
graph it out for you...
See the difference? The GPack III kicks mucho
ass! There is just no comparison when using it on the older Geforce boards, but
with the GF2MX it's a little different. The Tennmax cooler does a decent job
with the MX, keeping it below 100° F, but the GPack III improves that by about
10° F!!! I have to say the
GPack III rules when it comes to raw cooling power. If you feel that $30 is
too expensive, or you have no need for the eight memory coolers, you can buy
just the VIce III Xtreme by itself for $17.
Millisec has also added a Copper (Cu for you
scientist types) VIce III Xtreme that is $2 more for the complete kit, or $1
more by itself. We haven't gotten a hold of one of these units yet, but have
read that the performance is equal to it's non-copper brother, it's just a
little smaller in size (10mm in height vs 15mm for the non-Cu version).
Pro's:
Con's:
If you liked this article,
be sure to check our original Video Card
Cooling Comparison and our complete review on the Tennmax
BGA cooler.
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