With the Icy Vision 2, Gelid Solutions has a new high-end aircooler for graphics cards in their portfolio. Well equipped with two 90 mm fans, five heatpipes and 86 fins it comes at a very competitive price. What else? Oh well, we confronted it to well know coolers from graphics card manufaturers such as MSI's Cyclone and Twin Frozr II as well as Asus' Direct CU. Let's Battle!
On the following pages we will show you what the Gelid Solutions Icy Vision 2 is capable of.
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Preview
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Specifications and included in delivery
Specifications
| Model | Gelid Solutions ICY VISION Rev. 2 (GC-VGA02-01) |
| Material | Aluminium / copper |
| Dimension (D x W x H) | 216 mm x 95 mm x 52 mm |
| Weight | 465 g |
| Fan | 2 x 9215 S-Shape UV Blue Fan |
| Rotation speed | 2000 rpm |
| Noise level | 26 dBA |
| Warranty | 5 years |
| On the manufacturer's website | ICY VISION Rev. 2 (GC-VGA02-01) |
Included in delivery
- Cooling block
- Mounting kit for Graphics card, see the compatibility list.
- Mounting components
- Heatsinks for memory chips and VRM
- Thermal glue pads
- Spacers and screws
- Power cable for the fan (4pin molex or motherboard fanheader)
- Manual
Gelid Solutions' Icy Vision Rev. 2 is delivered in a thermoformed blister that fits every single components to not damage anything during the transport. Screws, thermal pads as well as heatsinks have got their own plastic bag in the package. Gelid Solutions provides quite a full bundle for his cooler. Next to the mounting plate you will find no less than sixteen aluminium heatsinks for memory chips, fourteen heatsinks for VRMs and a heatsink for the nVivo chip available on nVidia video cards. Add to this the numerous thermal glue pads, fourty to be exact and fifteen rings to protect the graphics card PCB from the screws and a complete set of screws, and there are even spare parts. Of course you will also find in the bundle Gelid Solutions' thermal compound GC-2. To finish this quite long list, there is also a power cable for the fans that can be plugged directly to your motherboard (fan header) or your power supply (molex).
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Construction and design
Construction
The Icy Vision Rev. 2 has got a well manufactured copper base plate with a visible mirror effect as you can see on the picture below. The heat is dissipated thanks to a set of no less than 85 fins using five copper heatpipes which have a diameter of 6 mm. An efficient cooling surface is quite important, with 85 fins and two 90 x 20 mm fans this cooler should be capable of good heat exchange.
Design
We did not see any manufacturing mistakes on our sample, and it seems that it has been well made which means that manufacturing is on a high level. We can see that the cooler is split into two separate cooling blocks which are connected via the copper heatpipes. One block offers 39 fins and the other 46. All the fins have been soldered to the heatpipes to guarantee good stability as wells as a good heat transfer.
Fan
Gelid Solutions equips their Icy Vision Rev. 2 with two 90 x 15 millimeters fans named 9215 S-Shape UV Blue Fan (Model No.: GC-VGA02-01). They both have eleven blades and they glow when illuminated with UV light. Unfortunately they are not PWM, so they are working at a constant speed of 2'000 RPM. However you can lower the voltage/fan speed using an adaptor power cable provided to connect it to one of your motherboard header and use your motherboard to monitor and control the fans. For our test, we used a fan speed controller. As for the specs of the fans, Gelid Solutions declares no more than 26 dBA, with an airflow of 114.13 CMH (Cubic Meters of air per Hours) and a static pressure of 1.3 mmAq. Furhtermore those fans have a magnetic nanoflux bearing which allows the fans to operate almost noiseless at low rotating speeds. Once the fans are dirty you can even disassemble them and wash them with floating water.
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Mounting
To mount the Gelid Solutions Icy Vision properly you'll find only one mounting kit that fits both nVidia and AMD/ATI cards. Installing the cooler wont need a lot of force and you'll need the mounting plate, eight screws and four nuts. The cooler can be mounted easily but it still fits perfectly and there is plenty of pressure between on the GPU. We also used the memory chips/VRM heatsinks on our card and everything went well and they were well glued thank to the thermal glue pads.
As you can see, we managed to mount the Icy Vision 2 on a card that is not on the compatibility list, the MSI Twin Frozr II using MSI's own PCB aka a non reference card. And it fits well, nothing to say, just that it looks awesome on this black PCB.
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Testsystem and test-routine
Testsystem
| Mainboard | ASUS P6TD Deluxe |
| Processor | Intel Core i7 920 2.66 GHz 4c/8t |
| Memory | Corsair Dominator TR3X3G1600C8D, 3 x 2 GByte |
| Graphics card | MSI HD 5850 Twin Frozr II |
| Coolers |
|
| Hard disk | Samsung Spinpoint F1 640 GByte |
| Power supply | Seasonic X-Series 750 Watts |
| Thermal grease | Gelid Solutions GC-Extreme |
Test Setup
For ou tests, we used MSI's HD 5850 Twin Frozr II card, on which
we used different coolers with the same thermal compound Gelid Solutions GC-Extreme
applied again for each coolers. We used AMD's CCC 11.7 to control fan speeds and
GPU-Z for the monitoring part of both fan speeds and GPU temperatures. For the
Gelid Solutions Icy Vision 2 though we used a fan speed controller plugged to the fan
cable to control the speeds as it's not PWM. Following, the tests we did:
For the noise level results, we measured the noise level using a
decibel meter located at 1 meter away from the graphics card. The noise level is measured in dBA @
+/- 0.5 dBA.
- Idle, temperature is taken after 5 minutes @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed.
- OCCT GPU, temperature is taken after 10 minutes of OCCT 4.0 GPU Stress test @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed. (1920 x 1080 (60 Hz), 1 Shader, Full Screen)
- Highest temperature reached under 3DMark Vantage @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed.
- Highest temperature reached under 3DMark 11 @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed.
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Idle / OCCT GPU
Fan Speed
Basically at 30 % the fans are almost noiseless, at 50 % you hear them and at 100 % it's noisy. The Icy Vision 2 though has got a fan speed of 2'050 rpm at 100 % that is less than the MSI's Twin Frozr II fans at 50 %. That said, Gelid Solutions' cooling solution is not as loud as other coolers at 100 % fan speed.
Idle Temperature
When Idle, every coolers perfom the same, there is only 1°C difference at most between them. Though the MSI Cyclone did really bad in Idle, we even unmouted the cooler and mounted it back again, same result.
Temperature under OCCT GPU
OCCT GPU as well as furmark are the graphics card's nightmare for both power consumption and heat keeping the graphics card under heavy load. MSI's Twin Frozr II proved to perform very well at both 100 % and 50 % fan speed but failed the test at 30 % as the temp of the GPU reached 85°C (OCCT shut down the test). Asus' Direct CU and MSI's Cyclone coolers failed both at 50 % and 30 % speed. Impressive results from Gelid Solutions' Icy Vision 2, even at 30 % speed, the temperature of the GPU did not reach the temperature of other coolers at 100 %.
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3DMark Vantage / 3DMark 11
Fan Speed
Basically at 30 % the fans are almost noiseless, at 50 % you hear them and at 100 % it's noisy. The Icy Vision 2 though has got a fan speed of 2'050 rpm at 100 % that is less than the MSI's Twin Frozr II fans at 50 %, that said, Gelid Solutions' cooling solution is not as loud as other coolers at 100 % fan speed.
3DMark Vantage
Again here, MSI's Cyclone perfomed worst while Asus' Direct CU and MSI's Twin Frozr II were close. Again, the Icy Vision 2 offered an awesome performance, there is a gap of only 5°C between 100 % and 30 % fan speed and like with OCCT even at 30 %, Gelid Solutions' cooler did better than others running 100 %.
3DMark 11
Same as for 3DMark Vantage.
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Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| Gelid Solutions released his new high end cooler for graphics card that proved to be very good in our test. Featuring a very complete bundle, where you will be able to find even more than you need and very good performance on every levels as well at 7v as at 12v. The Ivy Vision 2 cooler has also been very well manufactured although the mounting kit, the fans' fixation and heatsinks look a bit less well made. This can be justified by the price which is very competitive. Indeed Gelid Solutions made his monster available for only CHF 57.- (est. EUR 46.-). | -
Performance - Price - Manufacturing quality - Bundle |
- Noisy at 12 V | |
| Installation | + | - | |
| Mounting the cooler is quite easy and doesn't take a lot of time. There is a very good pressure onto the graphics chip. Applying thermal pads onto the memory chips and VRM can be annoying because it's not that easy to remove the peel off the protective films, but if you take your time it will be definitely easier. And those thermal pads proved to be good as glue, the heatsinks were well fitted. We did not test the cooling efficiency though. Also note that as we did on this test, the Icy Vision 2 may not be compatible only with reference cards but also with own brand PCB cards like our MSI Twin Frozr II. | - Easy and robust - Compatibility list | ||
| Performance | + | - | |
|
If you drive your two Gelid Solutions fans at twelve volts there are a both noisy. And unfortunatley they are not PWM capable, we would like the manufacturer to change this with the next revision of their cooler. We recommend to make use of the power cable provided and use the motherboard's bios/software to drive the fans at 7v if you like silence. Because even if we drove the fans at ''only'' 7 Volts, where they are almost noiseless, Gelid Solutions' cooler was still on the top, I mean even with 7v it did better than all other coolers we tested at their full 12v performance. Which makes the Gelid Solutions Icy Vision 2 perfect value if you can control the fan speeds. |
- Very good performance - Noiseless at 7v - Performance at 7v | - No PWM Feature | |
| Recommendation | + | - | |
|
The battle is over and we are happy to say that Gelid Solutions' cooler Icy Vision 2 won. Eveybody who is looking for a powerful GPU cooler should take a look at the Icy Vision 2. Even when the fans are at very low rotation speeds it outperforms the other coolers. |
- Desktop PC - Gamer - Overclocker |
- Office PC |
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Author: Chrictian Ney c.ney@ocaholic.ch