For a while now, CardCooler has been providing video card overclockers with the most effective cooling solution for your AGP and PCI slots.  The CardCooler (review link) has been on my instant recommendation list for about a year now, as I have not been able to find anything that could best it's performance.  Until now...

The CardCooler XT

CardCooler is back with a vengeance with their latest offering, the CardCooler XT.  Sporting two 120mm Sunon 2400rpm fans stacked vertically, the CardCooler XT is designed to cool everything in your PC.

Installation

Sporting a new anodized blue frame and finger guards, it's sure to be the darling of the next LAN party.

Upon removing the original CardCooler from my PC, I realized just how big these fans are.  In case you are metric-system-impaired, 120mm is just shy of 5 inches, making the vertical height of the XT a whopping 9.5 inches.  This should be your only concern if you are wondering if it will fit inside your case, just check the distance from the bottom of the inside of your case to the power supply if you are a little cramped.

The CardCooler XT draws power from the standard 5V/12V 4-pin connector and the wires are long enough to reach damn near anywhere in the case.  If you choose to, you can order the XT's fans with 3-pin connector, but you will need two open connectors on your motherboard or a Y-adapter (which CardCooler sells). Each fan pulls only 2.4 Watts while pushing 69 cubic feet of air per minute.  The high whine of the ball-bearing CardCooler is replaced by a low hum, which is quite pleasing (heh) and hardly noticeable while gaming.  I am not going to tell you it's quiet.  Let's just say, your PC sounds like it means business.

The Results

With so much airflow, my case has become a high-pressure system.  I removed PCI slot blanks to provide an escape valve and I can feel an impressive amount of warm air being expelled from my system.  With the XT's height, I realized that my CPU fan was being over-shadowed and removed the 32cfm unit in favor of just running the CardCoolerXT blowing across the CeleronII's Socket370 heatsink.

I used my handy thermal monitor and placed the probe behind the heatsink of my Celeron2 566@ 850MHz, ran tests, and then rested the probe on the back of my Annihilator2's GeForce2 chip to pick up the ambient temperature of each hotspot.

Ambient Room Temperature - 72 Degrees Farenheit

Without the CardCooler or CardCoolerXT, I doubt my system would remain stable.  The XT obviously keeps things cooler and I feel a little more confident that my Annihilator2 and Celery 850 are getting the airflow they need.

Conclusion

Priced at $34, I am going to come to the same conclusion that I did in our review of the original CardCooler.  Buy it NOW!

The folks at CardCooler were kind enough to send a couple of CardCooler XT's for the 2 Millionth Visitor Giveaway.  Be sure to sign up.

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