Thermalright's packaging for the HR-03 is unassuming.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new VGA air cooling champ, and its name is the Thermalright HR-03.

I checked the online store prices and this cooler can be purchased for in the neighbourhood of £30 / €45. A bit pricey, but I'd have to say it's worth it. You definitely need water cooling to do a better job of keeping your GPU frosty, and that'd likely be a lot more expensive than £30 / €45 anyway.

What's the downside? You have to buy your own fan if you want to actively cool your graphics processor. But since you can use the cooler without a fan if you like, that's a bit of a nit pick. The Thermalright HR-03 is an awesome VGA cooler and it deserves our Must Have Award!

Author's Opinion

It's always fun to play with the new gold standard of any product, and I'm pretty sure that the HR-03 will be the standard of comparison for VGA coolers until something better comes along. Until then, it'll be in my rig keeping my Radeon X1900 XTX nice and icy, thank you very much!

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