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In the Forums... |
Posted: March 18, 2002 Written by: Davey McWatters Modified Volcano 7 Introduction: Thermaltake’s Volcano 7 CPU cooler has been on the market for awhile now and is generally thought of as one of the best air cooling solutions available. However, there was a design problem with it. The temperature-controlled fan’s thermal probe was placed on the fan itself reading the ambient temperature of your case. What good does this do you when your CPU is what you’re trying to cool? The guys over at The Card Cooler have come up with a solution for you. They have moved the thermal sensor from its original location into the copper base of the heat sink. Does it help? The Cooler Itself  As you can see from the picture above, the fan includes a stylish grill with Tt written on it. However, the grill, because of its shape and design, won’t keep wires and small fingers away from the blades as well as a standard grill. You can also see in the picture above that they are powering the cooler using a 3 to 4 pin power adaptor. This is just precaution so that you don’t overload your motherboards fan header. ThermalTake has included a 3pin adaptor as well for RPM monitoring of the fan. This is a very nice feature.  The picture above shows that the cooler uses an 80mm fan sitting on top of an average sized heat sink. The 80mm fans used in many coolers today work as well or better than some of the loud 60mm coolers used not to long ago on nearly all coolers. 80mm fans are able to move as much air at a much lower noise level. The Volcano 7 is much, much quieter than my old cooler with Delta Black Label fan.   The above two pictures simply show the sticker on the bottom of the cooler. It is used to help prevent the copper from getting scratched and loosing some of its ability to dissipate heat as quickly. You should always make sure you remove this sticker or you will probably end up frying your processor.  The above picture shows the side of the unit, which includes the clip. The clip is basically the same as found on most other coolers on the market. You simply apply pressure to it with a screwdriver and clip it onto the socket on your motherboard. I’m waiting to see some revolutionary clip where we won’t have to press on it so hard and risk chipping our processor cores. There are a few but they are rarely used. As of right now, a CPU shim offers you the most protection from chipping your core. The Volcano 7 is a little bit larger than your average heat sink. The heat sink itself measures in at 68x70x77.6mm, the height, of course, includes the fan. The fan measures in at 80x80x25mm. As you can tell it is a pretty large unit, so if your motherboard has any capacitors too close to the CPU socket you may have trouble getting it to fit. Modified You Say? This is not a normal everyday Volcano 7. The difference is the temperature probe that is usually attached to the side of the fan has been moved into the copper base of the heat sink. The Card Cooler has done this by drilling a small hole into the copper base and inserting the thermal probe into it. They keep it in there with an epoxy so it won’t move around. The thermal probe now will take the temperature straight from the copper base instead of using your ambient case temperature. After all, it is the CPU you’re trying to cool and not the case right? A good reason to buy from The Card Cooler rather than to try to do the mod yourself is for the warranty. If you do it yourself you will void your warranty; however, if The Card Cooler does it for you, they warranty the unit. |
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