We know most PC gamers are performance mad, love to tinker, and want to know the ins and outs of cooling solutions, cases, control panels, mods and other gadgets. So we at Gaming Headlines have decided to bring you more PC hardware reviews on every piece of kit you can imagine.
Our first such review is for the Antec VCool, an interesting cooling solution designed to draw cool air through two expansions slots and deliver it to your graphics card where it will keep those expensive components a little bit cooler during hardcore gaming sessions.
At first glance the VCool looks exactly like an expansion-slot vent, which typically look exactly the same but are designed to suck air from inside the case and vent it out of the back through an expansion slot. The VCool, however, is a monster, taking up no less than two slots to maximise airflow which it draws from the back of your case and a grille on the back of the fan casing at almost 16 cubic feet a minute and delivers to your graphics card where the chipset fan can do its stuff and draw it through the heatsink.
The VCool boasts 3 fan modes which can be selected via a switch on the mounting plate, a somewhat hard spot to reach, we reckon, but the serious modder could connect the fan speed control to a control panel mounted in the front of their case. The fan modes deliver 3500, 3000 and 2500 rpm and, as Antec boasts, between 5 and 15°C additional cooling to your graphics card.
Antec have included a valuable design feature in the form of a expansion piece to the ducting which lets you unclip the mounting plate from the fan assembly and insert an extra length of ducting between the two to help position the fan in the right place for your graphics card. Because the VCool does not attach to the graphics card in any way it is compatible with anything, it'll even cool your sound card, lan card, TV Tuner or any other PCI card if you want it to and have the two free expansion slots available.
The fan control connects through the ducting with a 3 pin connector and power is supplied via a molex splitter which draws its power from a standard molex connector without rending it useless for powering your hard drives, optical drives or other fans.
These days performance isn't everything, however, so the VCool boasts a little extra consideration for the case-modder in you. 3 blue LEDs arranged around the fan assembly light the semi-transparent blue casing, fan blades and cast light out of the rear-grille. This makes it an excellent cooling solution for anyone with a case window- adding a little extra wow-factor to your computer's innards.
It has to be noted, however, that the VCool is not the be-all, end-all of graphics card cooling. It simply delivers the cool air needed by the fan on your graphics card, displacing the hot air around it.
Philip Howard
