HIS Radeon 9800Pro IceQ Video Card

The Card:

Front of card

Back of card

The first
thing you see when you look at this card is the huge cooling solution.
This type of cooling system may look very familiar to some of you have
dealt with ABIT’s OTES. The big difference between the two is that this
version runs much quieter than the OTES did. HIS calls their version the
DHES (Direct Heat Exhaust System), or IceQ for fun. Also like the OTES,
the DHES has a support bracket on the back of the card to help the card
bear the weight of this heavy cooling system.

In the
photos below, you can see the exhaust vent that consumes a PCI slot. There
is also a switch just below the vent that allows you to change the speed
of the cooling fan from normal to low speeds. The bottom of the IceQ cooling
heat sink is also shown below. The surface that looks almost like a mirror
finish is the portion that sits on the core. The last comment I have regarding
the IceQ system is that it does not sit flush with the back panel of the
card. I would think in order to efficiently remove the heat from the case,
it would need to be flush so the heat does not re-enter the case, especially
with the lack of air flow provided by this fan.

VGA, S-Out, DVI ports, Fan Speed Switch, and Exaust

HIS 9800 Pro with the IceQ cooling removed

Bottom of IceQ cooling system

The Core

HIS went
with ATI’s reference board design on the traditional red PCB. You can
also see that HIS has taken into account the heat generated by the memory
and has fastened heatsinks to all the memory modules. Lastly, the picture
of the 9800Pro core (R350) shows that the core on our sample was manufactured
during week 39 of 2003.

Moving on, let’s find out how this card performs!