Up Close & Personal, Looking at Details

With these first impressions of the Sparkle Calibre accelerator grabbing our attention we feel that checking this products a bit further is the only way to go. So, we will take a closer look and find out some of the essential features that make the Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition special amongst the competition. We will start with the front and move slowly to the underlying components. As we already mentioned the Sparkle Calibre version is in fact a reference PCB design, but with some customization around the cooling technique applied by Sparkle. With the constraint around pre-overclocked designs lifted, Sparkle could go it own way and opted for a different of cooling their Calibre series. Sparkle came up with a new cooling design, with the help of MACS Technology to keep the card cool and quiet while running the newest game titles.

As already mentioned the Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition doesn't feature the standard cooling designed by NVIDIA, but comes with a more advanced solution. To move away from the traditional reference design, Sparkle has opted to go one step further by looking at a 3rd party cooling system. While the reference cooling is doing a great job, you could always do better and more silent. In tact aspect Sparkle looked at the current market and which cooling products are available for the GeForce 8800 series. Their eye fell on the m-Sorceress II designed by MACS Technology which combines a TEC module with heatpipe technology. Yeah, a thermoelectric cooling which isn't that common but has proven to be very powerful for cooling processors.

The MACS Technology design of the m-Sorceress II is a great alternative choice which could make the difference. Although it is a rather new product, and hasn't shown off yet what it is capable of the combination of the heatpipe technology together with the TEC unit does sound very attractive. We don't see why this cooler shouldn't be quite better then the reference design. The m-Sorceress II is equipped with two low noise fans and adjustable fan speed. The fans will circulate the air through the aluminum fins of the two heatsinks. Each of these heatsinks is interconnected with two heatpipes. All this together is the driving force behind the m-Sorceress II cooler that Sparkle has picked for their Calibre series.

The m-Sorceress II solution looks awesome as a whole and does without a doubt stand out in the crowd. The design looks good, feels good and has the edge over the reference cooling solution. Next to the fans you can see the Calibre logo in full detail and each of the fans are also marked with the Calibre name. The cooler is bigger than the reference solution from NVIDIA but it does have its advantages as it is more effective and to that extend keep G80 chip at lower temperature. Next to that this also means that these Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition cards take up some extra space. Although the new mainboards envisage this by having left more room available between the PCI Express expansion slots.

The full height of the cooler becomes only clear when we look at the card from the side. It show that the cooler is actually taken up more space than two slots, which is something you should be aware of when going for the Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition graphics card. The cooling system isn't like the blower style that NVIDIA is using quite frequently. But the dual fan system does work well as these draw the air from below to the top of the heatsink. The two large heatsinks have ultra-slim fins to expand the volume which is profitable at reducing the heat. The combination with the quad heatpipes, linked to the heatsinks does make a difference. In fact each dual heatpipe is connected to one heatsink with a fan pushing the air through the fins.

The cooling solution is designed quite simply, though a bit different due to the use of the TEC module. The aluminum base that has direct contact with the GPU transfers its heat to a dual heatpipe which is passing the heat over to one of the aluminum heatsinks. A second aluminum sole, which doesn't make contact with the GPU also transfers its heat via its own dual heatpipe to the other heatsink. And in between the base and sole resides the TEC module. This means that the sole will always be hotter than the base, and both are cooled individually. Both heatsinks are heating up during work, indicating good heat transfer via their respective dual heatpipes. A good design focused around the TEC module to make the difference.