Hardware Graphics Card Coolers Investigated

Thanks for the reviews - though they pretty much confirmed what I suspected already.

I once Installed an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 on an 8800 because the stock fan was stupid loud. It went on very easily. My only complaint was the thermal tape for my ram sinks was not very sticky and I didn't want to buy a thermal epoxy.

 

Good thermal tape is pretty easy to come by.

 

Forget noisy heatsink fans, liquid cooled graphics are the way to go. Expensive, but worth it to not have to hear your pc, even when gaming. So nice and quiet and if done with special UV lighting and liquid it looks beautiful.

Unfortunately my new flatmate has a NOISY PC and we have them both in the living room

 

I have an older version of the Trad2, from before they came up with the VRM heatsink. I've got it on an 8800GT because the old fan was a pain, and yes, with fans it does take up 3 slots. The advantage for me was I already had 2 92mm fans sitting around so it was just £25 all together, and the cooling ability is fantastic. Even with the fans turned down I have a lower load temp than that with the stock cooler, and the full length of the card is directly under the fans. I should mention however that the instructions had the washers backwards, and I nearly ended up with a bent card.

I did make sure to mount a couple extra heatsinks on the VRMs though, even though that was very challenging to get them secure. I had an X1900XT back when they first came out, and the fan on that was like a hair drier. I changed it for a Zalman one which worked wonders on the GPU core, but it was just a small flower-style cooler and provided no airflow towards the end of the card (most cards at the time weren't that long IIRC). As such, the VRM's went and I started getting major artifacts everywhere. The BIOS POST readout looked like Matrix code...

Bottom line is air coolers for GPUs are a very funny business, and you've got to use your head and a lot of common sense to get them set up right - don't trust the heatsink manufacturer to do all the thinking for you. Make sure you cool all the components the card manufacturer covered with the stock cooler.

 

Looking at how poor third party air coolers are I think it makes sense to get a waterblock or just leave the stock cooler on their.

 

So I'm curious about this:

The one highlighted on the top left. This chip needs to be cooled on the 5870, was it dealt with on all coolers? Did the card die because the AC TTPro didn't have anything to cool that chip?

 

I've been using the Arctic Cooling S1 on my 9600 GT for best part of a year. Yes it was a PITA to install, but anyone with sense can tweak it to fit properly (ie chucking away the spacers). Luckily my 5770 is non-reference so it actually fits that as well, just waiting for new tape before I fit it.

9600 GPU load never tops 33c with a 7v 92mm fan underneath, idle is usually 20-22c.

The only issue I have is the ramsinks tend to fall off so replacing the thermal tape before fitting is best. Also, ramsink fins may need to be bent slightly depending on the card design - but nothing 10 seconds with a screwdriver can't fix.

 

i cannot confirm the difficulties you guys had with the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2.

I ripped one of those off my 3870 and installed it on a 4890 in like 10 mins it was super easy!

 

Graphics card manufacturers should build adequate cooling solutions into their cards. They're expensive enough as it is.

 

What, like this? Though, that's only good if you already have a waterloop in your system.
This was pretty good as well, which was why I was surprised at BT's results with Arctic Cooling coolers, seeing as that Sapphire card gave such good results.

 

This just goes to show, if you're gonna invalidate your warranty on your £250+ Graphics card by sticking a 3rd party cooler on it, you may as well bypass air-cooling and stick a frickin waterblock on the bugger.

That's what I did for my 8800GTX and it's still going strong, running 30 -35 degrees cooler than a stock card. By doing this I reckon I've also extended its life as I have a friend who bought the same card, running in in the same case and his went pop a couple of months ago.

Just my 2 pence....

 

Except they were testing air coolers.

 

Hey, I'm wondering if Akasa Vortexx Neo is compatible with 5850/5870?

 

Really???.... I didn't know that.... what with all those spinny things attached to them and the lack of any hoses

I think you missed my point.

 

Well, I finally installed the second hand Accelero S1 I've had sitting around for a couple of weeks, since the spare parts that I ordered off AC's webshop finally arrived today.
Something I noticed when I took off the stock cooler, was that one of the VRMs was chipped. Everything else looked fine.

I attached the sinks mostly according to the Twin Turbo Pro instructions, and while three sinks fell off during mounting (without the spacers), all other sinks stayed on well enough.

120mm Scythe Slipstream zip tied to cooler.

Temps are very nice, and the fan is keeping things cool and quiet. No cards dying on me...yet. =D

 

Can't see why you would take such a hefty score off the S1 just for being a pain to fit - something I never noticed tbh. Also the spacers on mine hold it at exactly the correct height off the PCB, so unless AMD have made significant changes to the core height on their cards in the last year or so I can't see how they could be a danger to hardware. The mere fact that the S1 can be used passively on many cards is a huge plus point that you just gloss over, instead choosing to imply quite heavily in the conclusion that either stock coolers or watercooling will almost always be a better/quieter choice which is simply not true imho.

 

seen that before too kay.. it maybe common

 

Please Google "Scythe Setsugen." They're available. My 1st hit was one of my favorite e-tailers, Sidewinder Computer Systems. They're listed by the manufacturer designation Scythe SCVSG 1000 VGA Cooler @$39.95USD.

 

I think BT was talking about Scyth themselves discontinuing the Setsugen. Retailers will probably have stock for a while yet, but officially, it's EOL.

 

Just did, and it's not available in UK