Sytrin Kuformula VF1 Plus

Sytrin is a newcomer to the cooling scene, and this is the second product we’ve seen from the company. The first product we sampled was its air-conditioned PC case (reviewed March 2006), which impressed the hell out of us. Sytrin’s VF1 Plus GPU cooler is also impressive, although it has a few faults.

Its construction is simple, consisting of a copper base plate with two heat pipes soldered to a gigantic aluminum heatsink. We don’t often comment on a heatsink’s looks, as they’re usually polished and clean, but the grungy, discolored appearance of this one is noteworthy. Compared with the elegant VF900-Cu, well, there’s no comparison.

Installation was relatively straightforward, but definitely not the easiest we’ve experienced. You mount little arms to the copper base plate, place the cooler onto the GPU core, and secure it from the other side with two screws. Eight RAM heatsinks are included, but their low, flat profile doesn’t provide much surface area for cooling. At least they adhere to the RAM as well as the Zalman’s heatsinks.

Now for the bad news: In order to cool the unit, you have to mount a massive cross-flow fan on top of the videocard. It performs very well, but the fan apparatus is difficult to install. You have to mount the fan to a frame, then push the frame onto the heatsink, ensuring that the parts are perfectly aligned, an exceedingly delicate proposition. The huge fan frame renders this cooler incompatible with SLI. It’s loud at full-tilt, but very quiet at low and medium speeds. You can adjust the fan speed, but the included knob is located on a PCI slot cover, where it’s tough to access.
This cooler outperformed the Zalman, but its difficult installation and unwieldy design make it much less desirable.

Month Reviewed: June 2006

+ CROSS-FLOWING: Fantastic performance; affordable.

- CROSS-DRESSING: Fan is cumbersome, and it's hard to adjust the fan speed.

VERDICT: 7

URL: www.sytrin.com