Zerotherm Hurricane HC92-Cu 8800

Verdict:

[+] CHILL

Very effective; fan speed controller; easy to install

[-] SHRILL

Noisy at high speed; gigantic; no direct exhausting of heat; no Radeon compatibility

The Zerotherm Hurricane HC92-Cu 8800 is ludicrously large. You might expect any graphics card cooler that incorporates a 92mm fan to be big, but the Hurricane is beefy enough to qualify as a quad-slot cooler. If you use this cooler on your graphics card, it will block cards from fitting in the next three expansion slots.

COOLING EFFECTIVENESS

The reason for the cooler's massive size is its large copper heatsink, which is fed by four heatpipes. The 92mm fan provides the Hurricane with immense cooling power. With the 3-pin fan header plugged into the supplied fan controller set to maximum, we saw the GPU temperature of our Asus EN8800GT TOP drop by 45°C.

NOISE

However, this meant that the Huricane created a lot of noise. Setting the controller to minimum made the Hurricane very quiet and the GPU was still 40ûC cooler than it was with the reference cooler.

The Hurricane is easy to install; the RAM heatsinks attach directly to the chips, while the bolts are attached with nuts that don't require a screwdriver.

However, the TIM supplied is thick and awkward to apply. Also, be aware that there's a lesser version of the cooler that's incompatible with the GeForce 8800 range, while more powerful ATI cards aren't compatible with either cooler.

CONCLUSION

You can't argue with the superb cooling ability of the Hurricane, but there's no getting around the problems caused by its considerable size. To install this gigantic cooler, you have to sacrifice all but the two lower expansion slots of a standard ATX motherboard - SLI with Hurricane coolers is out of the question.

Even with many of your expansion slots blocked by the Hurricane, there should be room for a sound card and a Killer NIC - arguably, a modern motherboard will have everything else you need already integrated. Costing £32, the Hurricane is pricey, although it's undeniably great at cooling.

You can buy the Zerotherm Hurricane HC92-Cu 8800 from QuietPC for £32 (price correct at time of review)

For more information on the Zerotherm Hurricane HC92-Cu 8800, see ZeroTherm's website

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