Cooler Master CoolViva Pro

[Rob Williams]

As their name suggests, Cooler Master is no stranger to cooling products. They were however new to graphics card cooling, but no longer thanks to their CoolViva Pro. We are taking their first GPU cooler for a spin to see if their legendary quality is carried over here.

You can read the review here and discuss it here.

 

[THUMPer]

hell ya thats ugly!
ill stick with my stock fan for now until Zalman comes out with something new

 

[riiaku]

hell ya thats ugly!
ill stick with my stock fan for now until Zalman comes out with something new

LOL, ok here are the facts, Most gamers are not looking at their video card when they are gaming for 6+ hours, most gamers are not rich. To say that most gamers would not get this because of looks is kind of dumb to me. Also this review sucked sorry to say but xbit labs did a much better job because they tested both an nvidia card and a ati card which is what you should have done, because it makes you look suspect and lowers your credibility. It does what gamers want mainly, excellent cooling, CHEAP, very quiet even at max fan speed, easy to install, blows air out the back of the case unlike the accelero x2, and comes with ram heatsinks. So you gave it a 6 out of 10 just because of being huge and ugly, haha thats sad. my ati x1900 xt stock cooler sounds like a friggin vacuum cleaner at higher than 60%. This cooler master cools almost equally as good as the stock cooler set to 100%, and is far quieter to the stock cooler when set to max(i dont hear it). I used to come to this website quite a bit for reviews but not anymore. anandtech, tomshardware, and xbit remain my top favs. Deserves at least an 8 out of 10. Although i could be wrong but for me i realliy dont care that much about looks when it comes to my vga card because it sits upside down in my system as like most systems. My razer barracuda ac-1 has a cool glow, my 4x 120mm red fans have asweet glow and my window allows it to illuminate, i dont even notice my video card. because thers a red fan on the window blockin view of it. lol

 

[Greg King]

How do you fit that sound card in your case when the Cooler Master VGA cooler takes up 3 slots?

It's unfortunate that you feel that you no longer can come back, but I stick by the review. My question to you is, how does the review, lacking an ATi card to test on, make us in any way suspect? I too have an x1900 XTX but it was being used in another test machine on the bench. I agree that the x1900 stock cooler does sounds like a vacuum and for those who can't live with it, it is something that has to be upgraded but in the review, it was stated clearly that the Viva Pro was silent. Also, please don't bring up the fact that not every gamer is rich when the Arctic Cooling Accelero that we reviewed cools just as well, doesn't look near as bad and costs almost 40% less than the Cooler Master Viva Pro. While we are talking about price, practically every other cooler available costs just as much or less and doesn't look so bad. This included Zalman, Thermaltake, Arctic Cooling and Zerotherm... all reasonably attractive coolers and all at the same price point as the Viva Pro.

I don't hate the cooler or the company, but in my opinion, it is ugly and it is worthy of a 6.