5770 cooling - egg cooler vs. shroud

[nafhan]

Going to buy a 5770 soon, and I've noticed that the lower priced cards are now being equipped with a 5750 style egg shaped cooler. Judging by looks alone the reference shroud cooler seems like it should do a better job, but the only review I've found says otherwise.

The site/review looks legit:
http://en.expreview.com/2009/12/04/...nd-edition-performance-comparison/6015.html/2

Has anyone else seen a review or compared the egg shaped coolers to the reference cooler? I'm mostly concerned about GPU temp and noise, not overclocking ability.

 

[happy medium]

Personally, I think the egg coolers look stupid.
I like the shroud. The shroud should put most of the heat out of your case too.

 

[mindless1]

I'd go for the egg. If the fan dies you can just cut a standard fan out of it's surround and nylon wire-tie it on, and with the egg the top pops off so you can easily clean dust out while most shrouds (assuming on that one too) you have to take the whole freakin' think off the GPU just to get to the screws, takes a dozen times as long just to do a simple dusting.

I suppose it depends on the case though, one with good filtered intake will lessen the impact of dust on the traditional shrouded one, or one with a good side panel fan will lessen the impact of not being rear exhaust with the egg and it will tend to have higher flow rate per noise level -but- it seems they used a fan with a high RPM so you'd needing to throttle it back a little if possible/needed.

The egg also gives you the option of putting short 'sinks on the VRM subcircuit components, or taller ones if you feel like voiding the warranty by cutting back the shroud enough for more clearance.

Edit: Maybe the egg's shroud screws onto the bottom side too, it looks to have two studs on the bottom to screw into but I can't see where those screws go in relation to the 'sink itself, maybe plastic loops that wrap around the bare heatpipe on each side meaning you'd still have to detact the whole thing to clean dust out. Disappointing.

 

[cbn]

I would get the egg cooler.

 

[lavaheadache]

the egg shroud has a2 tiny "eyeglass" screws that hold it to the heatpipe. Unless you have a small angle screww driver you'll need to take off the entire heatsink to get it off. A pair of snips would get it off too

 

[Borealis7]

i would always prefer an exposed heatsink to a shroud since i have 2x120mm fans mounted on the side panel of my case directly above the video card.

my current 4850 with the round exposed heat sink runs between 30 idle and 55 load.

 

[ZimZum]

Egg also has a better heatsink.

 

[Griswold]

The v2 "egg" cooler does perform better in every way. Its less noisy and cools better, both idle and load.

Here's a (german) comparison between the Asus EAH5770 (egg) and the old reference design:

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2009/asus_radeon_eah_5770/index7.php

In a nutshell:

Under furmark, the egg runs 12% cooler and 63% less noisy than the old design.

 

[betasub]

So are we likely to see these types of design being adopted for the higher-end cards? Or does the requirement for better VRM cooling on high-end cards favour the standard shroud design?

 

[MrK6]

So are we likely to see these types of design being adopted for the higher-end cards? Or does the requirement for better VRM cooling on high-end cards favour the standard shroud design?

Probably not - shroud/blower-type coolers are much more able to deal with the higher heat load of high-end parts and remove it from the case. The egg cooler vs. shroud design differences were brought to my attention in another thread, and it seems like there's a turning point in thermal management. The blower design only shrinks so much until it is superseded by an open cooler design. An open cooler design places more reliance (and stress) on the chassis cooling - with a smaller heat load, it isn't much of a burden, but once you move to high-end parts, it isn't as efficient as a blower-type design.

 

[nitromullet]

So are we likely to see these types of design being adopted for the higher-end cards? Or does the requirement for better VRM cooling on high-end cards favour the standard shroud design?

Along the lines of what MrK6 said, the 5870 cooler has a bit more meat on its bones..

5770:

image from: http://en.expreview.com/2009/12/04/...cond-edition-performance-comparison/6015.html

5870:

image from: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/visiontek_5870/3.html

 

[nafhan]

Thanks for the opinions and the link to that German review! Egg cooler it is...

 

[DonInKansas]

I have the egg cooler on my 5770. At stock it idles around 34C and gaming load never broke 56C according to Afterburner. It took running Furmark to get it to touch 70C. OC to 950/1350 it runs 34C/60C, Furmark 74C.