A few months ago, I bought an ATI Radeon 2600 Pro HD from New Egg.

The card worked as promised when delivered. It did not include a second HMI adapter, but I think most cards don't.

After three months though the cooling fan on the card suddenly became quite noisy. I took the heat sink off the card, and squirted a little wd-40 into the fan to see if I could get it to quiet down. With WD40 (or perhaps just unseating and reseating the heat-sink) the fan did seem quieter and after about an hour of continuous operation would settle into a low hum that was tolerable.

The fan noise was still annoying, especially in the first hour of operation, so I decided to see if I could find a replacement fan. What I found is that there is a thriving market for after-market video card heat sinks.

It seems that my 2600HD is at the current low end of accelerated video cards. While there are many different types and brands of heat sinks, few of them support the 2600. After much searching, I found the Artic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2. This seemed like a good option for me as it did not include a fan and so should be very quiet. I ordered one from New Egg, but when I received it I realized that they had sent me the Rev 1 by mistake and that that what I had would not fit my 2600.



I returned the Accelero and instead purchased a Zalman VF900 - CU. While the VF900 - CU is not listed as a supported card for the Radeon 2600, Zalman's support forum does indicate that it will work, and the layout of the mounting bracket seemed to match up with the mounting holes on the ATI card.

The heat sink arrived a few days later. It looks great--very shiny and copper. I wish I had one of those windowed cases to show it off. It's pretty easy to install, and comes with eight additional stick on heat sinks for the video ram chips as well as a speed control to attach to the outside of the case.



It is quite large, though and does take up the slot adjacent to the video card.



I'd say that it probably took me about 30 minutes to get the heat sink installed, all inclusive. With the new heat sink and running at its lowest (~quietest) setting, the ATI control panel indicates that the video card is running around 5C cooler than it did with the stock heat sink. If I turn the fan up all the way, the CPU temperature seems to cool down as well.

While the VF900 is cool, it's also somewhat expensive. My lesson learned from this is that the next video card I buy will probably be an NVidia.