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Jetart JACSH1


Date
: 03/14/05 – 01:33:48 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Jetart Technology
Price: NA

Jetart Technology, around since 1989, has for the past few years been focusing on thermal solutions; many of which you may have heard of or seen reviewed elsewhere. Today we take a look at a VGA cooling solution that Jetart aims at a wide user base, allowing the compatibility and performance for use on the majority of cards users own.

This solution we're looking at, the
Jetart JACSH1
, is a complete solution in that it includes all the mounting hardware, heatsinks, and thermal compounds to properly cool the memory and core of a video card. We'll look at this solution and compare it with the Zalman VF700-AlCu recently reviewed.

Page 2 : Package

The Jetart JACSH1 VGA cooler arrived in perfect shape. The retail packaging, shown below, displays the majority of the kits contents. The reverse side of the package lists the compatible GPU models and cooler specifications. This information presented to the consumer should be enough to prevent unnecessary returns.

Opening the package was difficult and required scissors. Once it was finally open, I had in front of me RAM heatsinks, double-sided thermal tape, a tube of thermal paste, mounting brackets, screws, mounting studs, and the large VGA heatsink.

The heatsink is all copper. The fan is a clear one that gets illuminated by a blue LED. The fan is a ball-bearing, 60 mm unit capable of spinning at 3400 RPM. In comparison, the fan on the Zalman VF700-AlCu is larger in diameter and spins at a max 2650 RPM. With this bit of information I'm led to expect a higher-pitched, and slighty noiser solution than Zalman's latest. The tests will help confirm these suspicions.

The fins are covered with a clear fan shroud that helps direct the airflow through them. Being clear, the shroud also illuminates nicely from the blue LED.

The bottom of the heatsink is where we find the three different arrangements for mounting the cooler. The mounting holes used in installation are determined by the location of the mounting holes around the GPU.

With the cooler on its side, we can easily see the amount of polish in the copper finish; the base is equally flat. Also, from this angle we get a good look at the fins, how they are shaped and the thickness of each. The fins are welded to the base of the cooler by what Jetart calls a 'delicate welding technique'.

Compatibility rests heavily on whether the video card in question has the appropriate mounting holes. As of this writing, the last update to Jetart's compatiblity chart (PDF) was on 1/14/2005 and while helpful, doesn't go to the great lengthes that Zalman went to which had impressed me so much.

Page 3 : Specifications

Jetart provides these detailed specifications available via their website:

The specifications listed above show promise. The complete copper heatsink weighes a relatively hefty 320 g – only 40 g short of being double the Zalman VF700-AlCu's weight. The fan is not small nor hardly slow leaving some cause for worry even though Jetart claims silent operation. And whether you have an available 3-pin header or not, Jetart has you covered with an included adapter.

I do have to harp on both manufacturers with their lack of spare parts; an extra screw, mounting stud, and some extra thermal tape would be a big plus, but none is included. Zalman's latest lacked this helpful extra as well, and was missed from their previous ZM80D-HP VGA cooler.

Page 4 : Installation

Installing the Jetart JACSH1 is not difficult, but can be called clumsy. Further, no documentation has been mentioned up to this point in this review. Why you might ask? Well, simply put, I never saw any. I am assured however, that on the inside of the packaging (remember, the hard to open packaging that required scissors to get it open) were installation instructions. This is certainly not something everyone will find, because not everyone is going to expect the cardboard to fold open to reveal such a guide.

So the install proceeded without any instruction and in a second attempt resulted in success. So the order went: install memory heatsinks, place heatsink face down on a flat surface with mounting studs attached, place video card onto and aligned with the mounting studs GPU face down, attach rear bracket with two screws to the mounting studs on the heatsink. The clumsiness of the install is in how you attach the heatsink. With the mounting studs attached to the heatsink and not the video card, the process is more like trying to mount a video card to the heatsink and not the other way around, as it should have been.

The installed product certainly looks impressive. The memory heatsinks, while not a perfect fit for TSOP packaging, do a pretty good job covering most of the chips.

Like many larger 3rd party VGA cooling solutions, the heatsink is so large in height that using it will also mean using the PCI slot that neighbors your AGP, PCI, or PCI-E connector for your video card.

With things set up, we now look into the performance and acoustics of the JACSH1 in comparison to the XFX stock cooler (a poor excuse of a cooler) and Zalman's excellent VF700-AlCu.

Page 5 : Testing

Testing was conducted with the following system specs and without the left side panel present:

Benchmarking analysis was limited to temperature performance. To gain the results, the card was run through consecutive Half-Life 2, Doom 3, FarCry, and 3DMark05 loops for five iterations with the maximum temperature recorded. Measurements were then recorded by hand and a RadioShack digital indoor/outdoor thermometer for monitoring the room temperature. Tests were done in the span of two nights and thus the room temperature fluctuated between 68°F and 71°F throughout the testing process.

All numbers were taken at a 325/550 core/memory frequency and overclocked numbers achieved with the Jetart JACSH1 were excellent and quite similar to the results obtained with Zalman's solution. Compared to the Galaxy's 6600 core, the one on the XFX had far more leg room. The JACSH1 allowed for as much as 495/570 settings without any signs of artifacts throughout Doom 3 and FarCry
gameplay
as well as 3DMark05 loops. For overclocked temperatures, results were taken at 470/570. And now, the results:

Both 3rd party solutions perform very well, and even more so when looking at the original stock coolers performance. Further, the lowered temperatures made it easy to scale the core far above its stock frequency. This type of difference can show a noticable effect in many applications, but while the performance may be close to the same between coolers, the acoustic levels were a different story.

The Jetart JACSH1 is not a screaming cooler, but to put things into perspective the Zalman in silent mode is inaudible, the Zalman in normal mode is quiet and about the same noise level as the stock cooler, and then there's the Jetart JACSH1. The JACSH1 is not a solution to get if you're looking for quiet and performance. That said, the JACSH1 does a good job in the performance aspect, but the noise level is not competitive with what Zalman has to offer, and not even an improvement over the stock solution (which would be hard to do, because it's quiet as well though at severe performance costs).

Page 6 : Conclusion

While my experience with Jetart's JACSH1 was somewhat of a mixed bag, I am happy with the final product. It does its job pretty well, delivering lower temperatures and relatively low noise levels in comparison to stock cooling. While not all video cards ship with weak cooling solutions, most can benefit from the improvements offered by such solutions looked at today. The worst things about this cooler involve the documentation placement and the ease of installation. There is plenty of room for improvements to both areas and I hope that Jetart puts more effort into them in the future.

What it comes down to is would I recommend this product? Well, if you can take your time and learn from my experience then I think the Jetart JACSH1 is a worthy cooler. Not the best, but certainly a good one.

Advantages

Good performance
Good compatibility
RAM heatsinks suited well for TSOP & BGA

Disadvantages

Not very quiet
Clumsy installation
Poor placement of documentation

Thanks goes to Jetart for supplying us for this review.