Hardware Graphics Card Coolers Investigated

kind of sucks(blows) and indeed there si opportunity for significant improvement

 

I wonder if it had a similar issue to the S1? I mean, I personally think the TTPro is more like a chunky S1 than an L2, what with the heatpipes and all.

Edit: I just realised, in response to my previous question:

I suppose that means you decided to limit that cooler to the 4890...but were the VRMs the only limiting factor?

 

The situation is annoying overall tbh.

The most GPU-coolers are not compatible to more then a very small array of GFX-cards, so each time I buy a new GFX-card I've to buy a new GPU-cooler aswell, if I don't wanna go with the noisy and insufficient stock-cooling.

The problem goes on, as the board-layouts change alot aswell lately, so the cooler which matched my old 4850 doesn't match the newer 4850 etc...

The manufacturers of GFX-cards are the ones, we need to point at. They're the ones, who don't deliver sufficient cooling-solutions in the beginning and I'm talking about stock clock-speeds here ofc.

I'm running a Scythe Musashi on my 4870, and I needed to secure the heatsinks for the RAMs and VRMs with thermal glue, so they don't fall off. The cooler manages the task of silent cooling excellent, but the card will never see another cooler again, due to the use of thermal glue.

The problem solves itself over time for me tho, as I'm playing less and less on my PC and only use it for office-tasks and multimedia, so GFX-cards become less interesting... I'm getting old.

 

how about a column on how to remove the shroud for graphics cards?

not everyone wants to spend money on GPU cooling, cleaning the dust off the heatsink inside the standard shroud helps a lot

 

even if manufacturers used some decent TIM, and in proper amounts that would help by at least 5 degrees.

 

But the shroud is different on every cooler...but anyone with reasonable amount of skills should be able to find their way around, and take it apart themselves.

 

Pretty much flip to the bottom of the board, unscrew screws, flip back up, carefully twist lightly to dislodge TIM seal, and unhook fan cable?

 

I think he was asking how to disassemble coolers to clean out dust, not just how to remove them from the card.

 

Hmmm, from your description, it seem s the chip was cooled very well, but the rest wasn't.

 

VRM perhaps? Also, there's a chip in the top left of the card, to the left of the first RAM chip...looking at the stock cooler, there is some thermal tape there, but there aren't any sinks provided with the S1 or the TTPro to cool this chip. Does anyone know what this chip does?

 

But why didn't you use it on the HD4890?

 

It seems they mostly tested each cooler only on one card each, or at most one ATI and one NVIDIA card. The two main cards were the 5870 and GTX 280, with the 4890 there only as a "legacy" test, so to speak. I would've liked a more thorough test as well, tbh.
I know most AC coolers can fit many cards...but I suppose after everything they experienced with AC coolers, I can understand why they wouldn't want to touch them again for a long long time.

 

It does worry that so many AC coolers are able to kill cards. Take a look here
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1515486

Killing DVI ports on 5970's not good. When they work normally very stuff from AC but a worrying trend.

 

Gee, killing DVI ports?? How is that happening?

 

"But why didn't you use it on the HD4890?"

Got to second that. Though for me it's kind of a moot point as I have had a AC Twin Turbo fitted to my 4890 for the last 6 months. So far no game has troubled it.

However, I've yet to play Crysis. Given I've just got hold of the Maximum Edition which I plan to spend the weekend with(sic) I am now, to say the least, somewhat nervous!

Should I be?

 

I'm genuinely shocked that the Arctic Cooling HSF's performed so badly. Any AC cooler that I've had for a card (dating right back to the radeon 9800 pro about 6 years ago, all the way through to the Geforce 9xxx series) has been fantastic, and has allowed some great overclocks on cards like the 8800GTS, GTX and 9800GTX. I've also had countless AC CPU coolers over the years, which again have been among the best I've seen. I hope these latest products are not a sign of things to come for AC :/

[edit]

To give you an idea, there are Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 8800's on all 4 of my 8800 GTS cards in the two dual card folding rigs that I run. Each of those cards overclocks from the stock 513 MHz to between 690 and 710 MHz with the AC coolers fitted, and they run 24/7. They're more stable than some geforce 2xx cards I've had.

 

It's not that the AC coolers performed badly, per se; on the contrary, they performed quite well, with the S1 posting the best temperatures, but as an entire package, they seem to be very troublesome.