Those with a sharp eye might have seen this cooler before, it’s actually a re-brand (and re-colour) of the Zalman VF3000. The cooler looks quite good in the Zotac black and orange colours. Zalman are usually quite respectable when it comes to performance and low noise cooling, so I’m kind of looking forward to seeing how this card sounds once powered up.

The back of the GTX 480 looks reference, right down to the padded strip on the back that was intended to cushion the stock heatsink.

The I/O plate of the Zotac GTX 480 amp is also the bog-standard GTX 480 affair, with two DVI ports and a mini-HDMI.

The Zotac GTX 480 AMP takes the standard (for a GTX 480) 6pin and 8 pin power connectors. The dual 92mm fanned heatsink runs the length of the card, and should keep things nice and cool. You can also see here the custom heatsinks on the other heat intensive chips, like the RAM modules, VRMs etc. The ‘top down’ cooling should mean those heatsinks get plenty of air and keep everything nice and cool too.

Next Page – Installation and Testing