Thermalright Shaman GPU Cooler Cases and Cooling   Page 1

Reviewer: RWL Staff Article Publish Date: 3/13/2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

    With so many CPU Coolers coming out each day we have neglected the few GPU Coolers available currently in the market. A few months back we did have a VGA Cooler Roundup with most solutions available back then but now both Thermalright and Arctic Cooling have introduced two models compatible with the GeForce GTX 580 and so we decided to take a look and see how well they do compared to the stock cooling solution. Today we are testing the Thermalright Shaman, a GPU Cooler which judging from its size, 140mm fan and price should provide quite better cooling efficiency than the stock GeForce GTX 580 cooler.

 

 

    Thermalright is an elite design house that manufactures cooling products for computer components for the best quality and performance your money can buy. In 2002, AMD released its first generation Thunderbird CPU and since then we have been there every step of the way to counter high voltage and high heat with innovative design and highly acclaimed cooling solutions not only for AMD but for Intel as well. One of early well known solutions was the SK-6. With many positive and rave reviews under its belt Thermalright bolted to the top as the heat sink manufacturer mostly preferred by Overclockers and enthusiasts around the World. To this day, innovation never left our vocabulary as we keep coming up with leading edge designs staying ahead of the competition.

 

  

    A few weeks back Thermalright surprised us all with their latest CPU Cooler, the Archon and so we had very high expectations from the Shaman unit. The only real issue i found with this unit was that it took more than 3 PCI expansion slots along with the card and so by using it you will lose 2 more slots when compared with the stock cooling solution. Of course not many people actually use all 7 PCI expansion slots, most don't even use half of them and the ones that do use all 7 usually have 8 or even 9 with the latest XL-ATX mainboards. In any case today we are here to test the performance of the unit and not judge its size, which is something that in the end always comes down to personal preference.