The Thermalright T-Rad2 is one of the toughest looking video card coolers on the market today with six nickel-plated heatpipes to transfer heat away from the GPU. With the option to mount two 92mm fans or a larger single 120mm fan this heat sink is unlike the one you used five years ago. Read on to see how this copper and nickel plated behemoth does!
If you own a graphic card with an unbearably hot core then it might be time to drop a bit of coin on an aftermarket heatsink. This is imperative if you are one of the few enthusiasts that enjoy taking a soldering iron to your precious electronics. Priced at $52 the T-Rad2 is a bit on the expensive side considering how you'll most likely be attaching it to a card that costs two to three times the cost of the heatsink.
Would have been nice to see the AMD Radeon stock heatsink with the fan at 100% does.
When I tested the GFXChilla I got a huge drop by just increasing the fan speed on the reference card and that is a free improvement... Might be interesting to see what free gets you before people consider fork over $54 plus shipping on a heat sink. Plus fan speed control is now in CCC in versions 8.10 and newer.
If you get the time maybe this is something worth adding to the chart.
The one issue with increasing the fanspeed on single-slot coolers is the noise that is produced. The T-Rad2 + 120mm fan was silent while the HD4850 on the stock fan profile was a quite loud. Cranking it to 100% evokes memories of turbo-prop plane taking off If I have time I'll try to include the HD4850 heatsink at 100% but AirGas is dropping off 180L of LN2 in ~1 hour and my pouring arm is getting itchy
Can this be run without the fan? I doubt it, but i figured i would ask. Maybe on a low end card that would only cost about as much as the cooler..lol
Mike
Everything is getting so damn big! CPU heatsinks are at the point they dont fit in smaller cases, now it looks like the video ones are going that way also!
Remember, I am opinionated and nothing I say or do reflects on anyone or anything else but me
Well.. I accidentally forgot to plug in the fan once when re-mounting and it was loaded around 80 Celsius at 825MHz but I did have a 12" fan blowing in the direction of the benching rig to provide general circulation. With how hot current cores are it really isn't smart to run anything "passive" unless it's a cut down card like a 4670. I did run old HD3850s passive with the Arctic Cooling S1 but those cores were also tiny so I could get away with it.
If I have time I'll try to include the HD4850 heatsink at 100% but AirGas is dropping off 180L of LN2 in ~1 hour and my pouring arm is getting itchy 
