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Early this year we put the first Prolimatech built VGA cooler to the test. The MK-13 is an impressive looking product, though we soon found it suffered from a few critical flaws. The most notable of which was the VRM cooling which comprised of a few small heatsinks, and as a result allowed the VRM’s to reach dangerous temperatures. Prolimatech has taken note of our complaints, and updated their package with a new, much larger VRM heatsink which we are going to check out today...
The Prolimatech MK-13 demonstrated a great deal of potential, and at the time of reviewing it we felt as though it was likely one of the best after market VGA coolers out there. The truly universal design meant that it could be used with all modern ATI and Nvidia graphics cards (Fermi was yet to arrive). The problem with this however was that when compared to purpose built coolers, the MK-13 was not as well equipped.
 By this we mean if a company was to develop an aftermarket cooler specifically for the Radeon HD 5870, then chances are it would be a better choice. Products that do not feature a universal design are traditionally better equipped to cool the intended product, as they will sport custom VRM cooling for example. The little heatsinks supplied in the MK-13 package were simply inadequate for cooling the VRM of the Radeon HD 5870 and other high-end graphics cards like it. Although they did work, stress temperatures of near 100 degrees are unacceptable, especially when the standard cooler never saw them rise above 51 degrees. This issue alone kept us from recommending this new Prolimatech product to our readers.
There was just one other problem we encountered with the MK-13 and that was to do with the mounting design. While it was very easy to install the MK-13 to our Radeon HD 5870 graphics card, we found that the spring loaded screws did not apply enough tension to the mounting bracket. This meant that the heatsink would wriggle around on the GPU and at one point caused the heatsink to break contact with part of the GPU, sending temperatures skywards. Unfortunately Prolimatech has not updated the mounting system to a version that applies more pressure on the GPU. Having recently tested the Thermalright Spitfire heatsink, which features a much better mounting system, we feel the MK-13 has potential for even greater performance once the contact issue is resolved. Still, for now GPU temperatures are well within acceptable ranges, and the MK-13 does provide considerable gains over the standard cooler here. |
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Blaster |
Posted on: 04/22/2010 01:21 PM
I love my MK-13 but it needs better VRM cooling! Even better than the new improved version. |
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TheHusky |
Posted on: 04/22/2010 01:25 PM
Meh that didn't really help much now did it. |
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TurboT |
Posted on: 04/23/2010 01:35 PM
For these highend cards they should just make coolers designed only for the GeForce GTX 480 and Radeon HD 5870 rather than this universal stuff. Arctic-Cooling use to do that well... |
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JaccoW |
Posted on: 05/18/2010 06:08 PM
I still think this coller should be used with the Thermalright VRM-R5. Is that possible, I mean does it fit? Because that would be a very good cooling and silent combination. |
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Steve Posts: 80 Joined: 2010-02-08 |
Posted on: 05/19/2010 03:31 AM
Posted by JaccoW on 05/18/2010 07:08 PM
Yes the VRM-R5 will work fine with the MK-13 and you are right it would make for a nice combo. |