You've more than likely heard of the movie "The Accidental Tourist"; well this evaluation is "The Accidental Reviewer". Several months ago I announced that I was giving up reviewing so I could free up some time to spend with my family; but because of a database mistake, this cooler ended up on my doorstep. I contacted PC Apex's lead reviewer, AntiM, and asked who I should forward it to. In typical AntiM fashion he just said, "Go for it, bro." I happened to be in-between projects so with a reluctant sigh (and a big-assed grin) I agreed. I must admit, it was rather enjoyable to get back into the saddle again, especially with a product from Zalman.

If you are reading this, I don't need to give you any background on Zalman. Their products are as ubiquitous as Intel or AMD. I have reviewed many of their items and they never fail to impress me. I entered into this review with the hope that their record would not falter with this Fatal1ty branded product. Since one of my computers has an ATI Radeon X1900XTX card in it I figured it would be the perfect subject for some cooling and/or noise reduction testing. I swear, the X1900XTX sounds like a damn vacuum or DC-9 when the computer boots or when the card gets hot.

The Zalman Fatal1ty FC-ZV9 is actually a VF-900Cu LED with slightly different colored Copper and a Red LED instead of Blue. Oh yeah, it also carries Fatal1ty's picture, name, and endorsement. Say what you will about Fatal1ty branded products... any one of us would jump at the chance to market ourselves if we were given the opportunity. I must admit that he has only lent his name to some pretty good performing hardware thus far, even if some of it is a little too flashy for my taste. Let's dig a little deeper into what this Fatal1ty GPU cooler has to offer.

Package

There is no mistaking who endorses this GPU cooler if you look at the package. Fatal1ty's name and image are all over the front and back of the box. As a matter of fact, if you didn't know Zalman's products you would have to look closely to see who manufactured it.

Inside the package you received everything you need to mount it on just about any modern video card out except for Matrox cards, nVidia's 5xxx series, and ATI's 9600/9550 series. One thing that surprised me is that it states it is also incompatible with nVidia 6600 AGP series cards; I thought the mounting on them was pretty standard. It also doesn't work with the emTek GeForce 6600 HV6600GE2 SF 128MB and the emTek HV GeForce 6600GE WoW Platinum 2 128MB.

Along with the heatsink there are 8 ramsinks, a fan-mate fan controller, the fan-mate cable, mounting screws, some double sided tape (for sticking the fan-mate on the chassis), a Zalman case badge, and the installation manual.

The fan-mate controller comes with almost all heatsinks that Zalman makes. You plug the heatsink fan into the cable and the 3 pin female adapter into a fan header on your motherboard. The other end of the cable plugs into the controller. The controller's purpose is to give you some flexibility with cooling and the amount of noise the fan makes, but it really isn't needed with this package. The fan is very quiet even when running full blast, and who doesn't want to keep their GPU as cool as possible all the time?

The heatsink is made out of Copper, but the FC-ZV9 isn't Copper colored like the VF900-Cu is. The heatsink isn't overly large, it is 96mm across and only 30mm high. Still a little too tall to fit dual cards in most Crossfire or SLI motherboards. The heatsink weighs in at 185 grams or about 6.5 ounces, so it shouldn't be dangerous to use if you move your computer around a lot.

The FC-ZV9 uses a 80mm turbine-style fan for cooling. The fan is a dual ball bearing model, which is a good thing. You don't want a sleeve bearing fan in an environment with potential high temperatures and mounted horizontally. The fan has a top end of 3600 RPM at a noise level of 36 dB. I'll tell you, during testing I didn't hear anything that remotely sounded like 36 dB.

This heatsink uses heatpipe technology to assist with the cooling. There are two heatpipes integrated into the heatsink cooling fins encircling the card 180 degrees in opposite directions. The added benefit of having these heatpipes is that the fins are much more stable. The fins are only .2mm thick so without the heatpipe running through them, they would bend pretty easily. As is always the case with Zalman cooling products, the engineering and build quality is excellent.

There is absolutely no need for any lapping or finishing on the bottom of the heatsink. The bottom is so smooth that it almost looks like a mirror.