Showing off the power of dual fan: Thermalright T-Rad2 GPU cooler review
◆ Building SLI/Crossfire platform with T-Rad2
If T-Rad2 fixed on the card fanless way, there won’t be any problem when building double-card or multi-card system. But fanless is not practical after all. The installation of fan is necessary in almost all occasions. If to build two 92*92*20mm or one 120*120*25mm fan, the cooler would be much higher, which may cause troubles to building multi-card connected platform.
The height of the whole card
The height of whole GFX Card = the height of cooler itself (including fan) + the thickness of card PCB and GPU + the height of rear screws. When the height of whole cooling system exceeds the space between two PCI-E x16 slots, the installation of multi-card system would be a big problem.
The height of rear screws reaches 11mm
Take T-Rad2 for example, the rear screws pops out about 11mm. Added to the thickness of PCB and GPU (about 3mm), then the whole card is as high as 58mm (24+20+3+11). If the height of chosen fan is 25mm, the height reaches 63mm.
The motherboards with SLI/CF usually provide 2 or 3 PCI-E x16 slots, and the distance between the slots are also different.
ASUS P5N-T Deluxe Motherboard providing 3 PCI-E x16 slots
Mobos with two PCIe X16 slot have fewer space for cooler, it is only 55mm. So you can not run SLI/Crossfire with two cards installed with T-Rad2.
ASUS P5N-T Deluxe provides three PCIe x16
Mobo with 3 PCI-E x16 slots have only 40mm between each PCIe slot. the distance between first and third slot is 80mm. Apparently, if you want to run SLI/CrossFire with 58mm high T-Rad2, the only choice is to build the card on the first and third PCI-E x16 slot. So multi-card with T-Rad2 is not practical at all.
In another word, if you want to build SLI/CrossFire system with T-Rad2, you can only choose a motherboard with 3 PCI-E x16 slots, and all you can run is dual card setup or find yourself some shorter screws to fit. The screws attached with T-Rad2 are too long. It’s practical if the length is 5mm shorter, which means the height of cooling system is 53mm, exactly a bit smaller than the 55mm space between 2 PCI-E slots.
If you want to get 3 Way SLI or three card CrossfireX, it’s not possible to even add a fan on T-Rad2, not practical.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: a closer look at T-Rad2
Page 3: Installation
Page 4: Multi-card issue
Page 5: Test setup and remarks
Page 6: The performance of T-Rad2
Page 7: Fanless with T-Rad2
Page 8: Who to challenge T-Rad2
August 18th, 2008 at 5:00 am
[...] FurMark has been used to overload the GPU. [...]
August 21st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Detailed and professional review as always.
Hope TR will improve it.
Anyway, an awesome cooler!
August 21st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
You have made a vital mistake in your review of the Thermalright TRad 2 VGA cooler. You have calculated the total height of the graphics card and cooler to be 58mm, and then stated that this won’t fit in the 55mm space between the slots of a 2 x PCi slot motherboard. However, when calculating the 58mm dimension you have included the 11mm for the bolts, which protrude at the rear of card. Therefore the space required between slots is actually 24mm (heatsink) + 20mm (fan) + 3mm (debatable for PCB) = 47mm
August 21st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Ahhh no. I see…..
The bolts on the second card would conflict with the fan[s] on the first.
Doh! Sorry
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:06 am
BTW use the “start-Xtreme-Burning.bat” start file with Furmark, it makes the cards ever hotter!
August 26th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Where could one find a 92mm x 20mm thick fan. Google tells me no such beast exists.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
@wheatbread:
AVC have a 9220 fan. And i believe other company also have this type
http://www.avc.com.tw/china/products/DC-FAN-home.htm
August 30th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
so how thoes this compare to HR03GT + 120mm fan? I bet its a close score.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:32 pm
A great review! I’ve been waiting to see some real-world results from this cooler for some time now.
@wheatbread, I’m sure a standard 25mm thick fan will fit just fine. 92mmx20mm fans are very rare.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:28 am
[...] Page 1: Introduction Page 2: обзор кулера [...]
October 9th, 2008 at 6:11 am
on the bolts at rear comment , potentially simple fix is just to trim them down and replace the knurled nuts with standard nuts , this would free up a good 5mm , ill test the theory when i get my second 4870 later on this year , ordered one of these babys from usa this week
November 13th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Are there any sites that you can buy those thin 92mm fans from? The link from That Linux Guy is in Chinese and there is no were to purchase from them. Google returns no results for the DA9220 part number.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:01 am
You incorrectly state that the HR-03GT cooler can only use a 92mm fan. I have attached a 120mm fan to the HR-03GT with a little bit of modification of the wire clips.
October 13th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
I?ll right away grasp your rss feed as I can’t in finding your email subscription link or newsletter service. Do you have any? Please let me recognize in order that I may subscribe. Thanks.
April 5th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
How-do-you-do, just required you to know I’ve added your web site to my Google bookmarks due to your extraordinary weblog layout. But seriously, I believe your web site has one of the freshest theme I’ve came across. It actually assists make reading your weblog a whole lot easier.