Thermaltake Extreme Giant III

Manufacturer: Thermaltake Technology
Supplied by: Thermaltake Technology
Street Price: TBA

By Dean Barker (2/25/2003)

 

Introduction

Graphics card cooling is big business now.  The current crop of VGA cards are clocked higher and need additional cooling for their potential to be fully realized.  We have had several cards lately that overclocked well and it was obvious that with more aggressive cooling there would still be more gains to be made.  Some time back, Thermaltake put out its Giant II sandwich cooler.  The Giant II was a very good cooler but only had a small 40mm fan to move air.  The small fan was to keep the volume down making the device more universally desirable as a good easy to live with cooler.  Enter the Giant III.  Thermaltake's newest sandwich cooler is designed for the enthusiast this go round.  Sporting dual heatpipes, copper RAM sinks and two performance oriented fans, its clear they are looking at to enter the rather large niche of speed freaks that we all are a part of. 

Today, we have an opportunity to play with one of Thermaltake's newest toys.  Let's take a look at the specs then jump right in.

Specifications

• Dimensions (installed): 145 (W) x 50 (H) x 180mm (D)

• Weight: 490gms

• Construction: Aluminum with copper heatpipes and RAM sinks

• Color: Silver

• Primary fan: 60x60x10mm with three position switch

• Primary fan speed: High-5300 RPM, Medium-4200 RPM, Low-3000 RPM.

• Primary fan sound level: High-38dBA, Medium-30dBA, Low-21dBA

• Primary fan max air flow: 22.3 CFM

• Secondary fan: 40x40x40mm 'Squirrel Cage' fan

• Secondary fan speed: 9000 RPM

• Secondary fan sound level: 41.6 dBA

• Secondary fan air flow: 3.5 CFM

• Sleeved power cables

• Applicable to both NVidia and ATi products

What you get

Included with the parts to put together the Giant III cooler is a good instruction manual, a large tube of thermal paste and a dual fan control slot bracket.  The slot bracket has a three position switch for the primary fan's speed control and an on off switch for the secondary fan.

The unit and its installation

We happen to have a Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT laying around which has been begging for some extra cooling.  The card itself clocks at 500MHz on the core and 600 on the memory.  We were able to get a stable overclock of 577 on the core and 692 on the memory with the stock cooling in that review.  I'm convinced there is more we can get out of this card.  Let's see if the Giant III will allow us to get it.
 

NEXT

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - The unit
Page 3 - Performance and Conclusion