Introduction

If I told you that you can buy a heatsink for your high end VGA card which doesn?t make any noise and doesn?t overheat the core, would you believe me? That?s exactly the product that Katherine sends over; she?s the president of a company located in Sheridan, Wyoming in the USA. Aerocase was founded in 2005 by an all woman management group and an aerospace engineering team.

Tech savvy females beat other companies to punch with their first product, the Condor, world?s first passive VGA heatsink for high end (and hot) graphics cards.



Aerocase is still operating at a smaller scale, each Condor is hand made and designed to fit the customer?s need, this does increase the price over what you normally expect to pay for a third party air-cooled heatsink, but the result is extraordinary too.

The Condor will fit any current high end card (except for the NVIDIA 7950GX2) and can be configured to a mid or high tower, as well with the wing reversed or normal. The starting price before shipping & handling cost is ~$60. You can buy it directly from Aerocase. If you have a slightly older VGA card you can use the Raven heatsink which costs only ~$46.

A wing you say?



The Condor comes in unbranded box stuffed with Styrofoam, its voyage over the Atlantic Ocean didn?t leave any visible traces on the heatsink, and it arrived in mint condition.



The Condor?s wing dissipates the heat transferred from the base of the unit, 3 heat pipes laid out in a V form maximize the surface area for each heat pipe. The base consists of a copper insert which is attached using Arctic Silver Epoxy to the larger base made out of aluminum with a black powder coating. In the photo below you see the base pre-applied with Arctic Silver 5, however this has been changed to a tube of Arctic Ceramique so you can reinstall the unit without worrying about thermal paste application.



The Wing is made from a series of finned heatsinks which sandwich the heat pipes between them.



The orientation of the wing can be set to either hang over the CPU area (optimal position) or over the PCI slots.


For more specifications and detail on the Condor go here

Let?s get it installed ->

Installation

Weighing in at ~520 grams the Condor is no light weight; in fact it?s the heaviest VGA cooler I?ve tested yet. The Arctic Cooling Silencer series comes closest at ~420gr but it doesn?t have a wing attached to side of it. A good mounting method is essential for the Condor to succeed; after all, you don?t want the wing to come crashing down. When transporting your case with the Condor installed inside you should take the same precaution as with the heavier tower CPU coolers, lay your Tower case on its side.

Looking at the bag of mounting gear I received I was a bit puzzled at first, why are there tooth picks? In the photo below you can see the custom mounting gear that comes with the Condor as well as the 4 screws+spring used by the default 7900 GT heatsink.



As you guessed, I used a 7900 GT to test the Condor, the installation manual has detailed instructions on how to get the unit installed, and it also reveals what the tooth picks are used for:



Four plastic washers are placed over each mounting hole, the two tooth picks help you guide the VGA card so that the core sits right in the middle of the copper base:



A second set of washers and screws are then needed to secure the heatsink in its place. I found that the metal used for the screws was quite soft and the + was easily stripped out. Aerocase informed me that they are now shipping brass screws which removes this problem, you also now get a spare screw/washer/rubber, that?s good news for clumsy people like me:)



With the Condor in place it?s time to place it inside my test system.