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The BFG 7800 Series Cooler |
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Pretty, pretty, pretty… and useful |
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by Josh Walrath |
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Some years back a group of employees broke off from VisionTek once the company started to hit some rocky legal beaches, and formed BFG Tech. BFG was founded as a video card company that catered to enthusiasts and would become one of NVIDIA’s largest North American partners. One of the primary goals of BFG was to create products aimed at the enthusiast market. One of the easiest things to change about a card was the cooling that was offered, and this was something that was promised early on. Unfortunately for BFG, they started offering products after NVIDIA had released the AGP 8X GeForce 4 series, and the infamous GeForce FX 5800 had yet to be introduced. BFG did release a custom cooler with certain SKU’s, but these products were overshadowed when compared against other brands such as MSI and Asus, as well as the all powerful Radeon 9700 Pro.
Our first look at the cooler. Note the clear plastic covering the BFG logo. This can be removed and the logo simply glows once it is cleaned up. The overall cooler size is slighly larger than stock. Also note that the area under the fan on the BFG card is copper, while the stock cooler has nothing under the fan. Every inch of surface area helps. It wasn’t until the 6800 series that BFG really took cooling into measure, and developed some very original non-reference designs. These were well met, but not overwhelming successes. Their most effective design so far actually appeared on the GeForce 6600 GT, which was a solid cooling solution that not only performed well, but it looked sharp too. BFG sold a lot of these 6600 GT’s to the public, and it made a formidable product in retail due to its blue PCB and all copper heatsinks with the clear fan and blue LEDs. BFG decided to take it all one step further. The folks at BFG designed a cooler for their 7800 series of cards that would not only provide better cooling performance from the stock heatsink/fan, but it would also have some innovative features that would help with installation as well as providing a stunning looking package. Copper is King The entire front portion of the heatsink is copper. As you may or may not know, copper is very efficient in conducting heat, but not as good at dissipating it as aluminum. With the amount of copper that BFG is using for this cooler, heat dissipation is not really going to be a problem. Both the main cooling surface as well as the memory heatsink is made of pure copper. This is a very heavy heatsink.
Note the height difference between the two coolers. While the BFG cooler is still technically a single slot solution, any card place right next to it will be very crowded. The BFG cooler provides some serious cooling power. The fan is made of clear plastic, and is 80 mm in size. This really pushes the air, but it is a bit noisy. The embedded blue LEDs do make the fan glow quite nicely, as well as the plastic shroud that covers the copper cooler. Stamped onto the plastic shroud is the BFG logo, which really helps round out the aesthetics. Overall the quality of the construction is outstanding. It fit on my Leadtek GeForce 7800 GTX with no problems, and all surfaces were flush with the chips they mated with. One Speed Fits All Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear as though the fan can be controlled through the BIOS or other tweakers. The sample I have spins at one speed, and so far I have been unable to find a way to slow it down. It isn’t a super annoying fan, but it is fairly loud. Compared to the stock fan on most standard GTX’s, the BFG certainly makes some noise. BFG is currently looking into making the fan more variable in speed when temperatures increase or decrease. As of this time though, it certainly appears as though the fan on the cooler will stay at one speed.
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Copyright 1999-2005 PenStar Systems, LLC. |
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