After-market coolers for your 6xxx?

Spare-Flair said:
There's a large thread here on Hardforums with a lot of people with bricked 5970s because of the Accellero.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1515486

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=342847

Happened to hundreds of people on many hardware forums. AC never admitted the problem, nor provided any refunds or compensation.
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I've heard of these issues with that model Radeon and AC but your post came across as if all of their products were bad.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
I've heard of these issues with that model Radeon and AC but your post came across as if all of their products were bad.
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The fan on my Accellero Twin Turbo fried itself within months and the VRMs regularily hit over 120° C causing the card to crash. Additionally, the adhesive they used on their heatsinks was far too weak and ramsinks would fall off the card constantly under the mere force of gravity, despite following the instructions to warm up the heatsinks with a hairdryer before install. I suspect this was a late addition to the instructions to remedy a problem their engineers knew about already but it didn't do anything.
 
Spare-Flair said:
The fan on my Accellero Twin Turbo fried itself within months and the VRMs regularily hit over 120° C causing the card to crash. Additionally, the adhesive they used on their heatsinks was far too weak and ramsinks would fall off the card constantly under the mere force of gravity, despite following the instructions to warm up the heatsinks with a hairdryer before install. I suspect this was a late addition to the instructions to remedy a problem their engineers knew about already but it didn't do anything.
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wow thats some bad luck dude.

The adhesive I know is junk but that is the same for all the aftermarket coolers they all use cheap glue for the ram sinks that is why when I install them(have for friends) I always use something better and not the stock glue.

I've not had an single issue with any of their coolers for the last few years.

All my cases tend to have very good air flow and I can usually install them without VRM sinks or ram sinks my current card does 60c load without either of them installed.

You are correct some people have had issues with some of the coolers I just can't add myself to that list.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
wow thats some bad luck dude.

The adhesive I know is junk but that is the same for all the aftermarket coolers they all use cheap glue for the ram sinks that is why when I install them(have for friends) I always use something better and not the stock glue.

I've not had an single issue with any of their coolers for the last few years.

All my cases tend to have very good air flow and I can usually install them without VRM sinks or ram sinks my current card does 60c load without either of them installed.

You are correct some people have had issues with some of the coolers I just can't add myself to that list.
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No VRM sinks is murder. VRMs without sinks will go over 120° C which is near their rated maximum within minutes of gameplay. I don't know how you could possibly go without VRM sinks without your cards dying unless your cards are non-reference and have not implemented VRMs but another power regulation solution. :( It has absolutely nothing to do with the core temperature of the card. If you have a reference card, the VRMs have their own temperature sensors which you can monitor.

VRM cooling is critical, that's why there are even crazy options out there like the VRM-4.

IMG_2225.jpg
 
I installed the arctic cooling accellero twin turbo pro on my 6870 and my temps dropped about 20c on the gpu and vrm. I did a little research and knew using the thermal tape would be a bad idea, so I used the thermal glue on the vrm. To say that the stock cooling is best, just noisy is completely false, stock cooling is hotter and louder. Why else would manufacturers be putting non-reference coolers on their high end cards.
 
darkstarcow said:
I installed the arctic cooling accellero twin turbo pro on my 6870 and my temps dropped about 20c on the gpu and vrm. I did a little research and knew using the thermal tape would be a bad idea, so I used the thermal glue on the vrm. To say that the stock cooling is best, just noisy is completely false, stock cooling is hotter and louder. Why else would manufacturers be putting non-reference coolers on their high end cards.
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Because they are cheaper to manufacture. They are just a big heatpiped heatsink with a big cheap axial fan and a plastic shroud on top mounted with 4 screws without full metal front and backplates and costlier centrifugal fans. Axial fans also don't work in crossfire very well unless there is enough spacing between the cards and they blow hot air back into your system.

Non reference designs are 90% because they manufacturers are saving money.

The Twin Turbo was a nightmare and my VRM temps were over 120° C. Replacing the original reference cooling, my VRM temps went down to 70s on load because the VRMs were cooled by the entire mass of the cooler including the metal front and backplates instead of the dinky VRM heatsinks the Twin Turbo came with.

accelerotwinturbo5870.jpg
 
Spare-Flair said:
No VRM sinks is murder. VRMs without sinks will go over 120° C which is near their rated maximum within minutes of gameplay. I don't know how you could possibly go without VRM sinks without your cards dying unless your cards are non-reference and have not implemented VRMs but another power regulation solution. :( It has absolutely nothing to do with the core temperature of the card. If you have a reference card, the VRMs have their own temperature sensors which you can monitor.

VRM cooling is critical, that's why there are even crazy options out there like the VRM-4.

IMG_2225.jpg
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Nice cooler.

My card is a reference sapphire card which had stock cooling. Its been awhile since I pulled off that cooler but I do believe it had some Stock Vrm cooling which I left as is. Remember I said I have very good air flow in the case. There is a 120mm case fan on the side that blow air directly on the videocard plus the AC on it.

There is 2 two top 120mm exhaust fans 1 120 back exhaust 1 120mm side fan 140mm front intake fan. All of this controlled by a 6 knob fan controller. I have the gpu fan running at 25% when idling and depending on room temp idle is around 40c. I will take a picture of it at full load aswell as a picture of the inside of the case and update this post.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
Nice cooler.

My card is a reference sapphire card which had stock cooling. Its been awhile since I pulled off that cooler but I do believe it had some Stock Vrm cooling which I left as is. Remember I said I have very good air flow in the case. There is a 120mm case fan on the side that blow air directly on the videocard plus the AC on it.

There is 2 two top 120mm exhaust fans 1 120 back exhaust 1 120mm side fan 140mm front intake fan. All of this controlled by a 6 knob fan controller. I have the gpu fan running at 25% when idling and depending on room temp idle is around 40c. I will take a picture of it at full load aswell as a picture of the inside of the case and update this post.
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The 5870 does not have reference cooling parts that you can leave on the card. It's built into the top of the entire shroud so once you remove it, you cannot use it if you intend to use aftermarket cooling. The 5850 however could retain the front metal plate. Therefore I had to use the VRM sinks from Arctic Cooling which failed miserably.

I had two 140mm fans blowing at the Twin Turbo in a futile effort to cool the VRMs. Nothing worked.
 
Accelero xtreme plus works great should lower temps by a good 5-7C. or you can try reapplying paste.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Because they are cheaper to manufacture. They are just a big heatpiped heatsink with a big cheap axial fan and a plastic shroud on top mounted with 4 screws without full metal front and backplates and costlier centrifugal fans. Axial fans also don't work in crossfire very well unless there is enough spacing between the cards and they blow hot air back into your system.

Non reference designs are 90% because they manufacturers are saving money.

The Twin Turbo was a nightmare and my VRM temps were over 120° C. Replacing the original reference cooling, my VRM temps went down to 70s on load because the VRMs were cooled by the entire mass of the cooler including the metal front and backplates instead of the dinky VRM heatsinks the Twin Turbo came with.

accelerotwinturbo5870.jpg
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To be blunt, it sounds like you incorrectly installed an aftermarket cooler, and now want to blame the maker for your mistake. I have the twin turbo, and it has done wonders for my temps, especially the arm's, I was having issue due to my vrm getting too hot with the stock cooler, not anymore with the twin turbo pro. Start taking responsibility for your actions and stop trying to tear down good products because you were unable to install/use it correctly.
 
darkstarcow said:
To be blunt, it sounds like you incorrectly installed an aftermarket cooler, and now want to blame the maker for your mistake. I have the twin turbo, and it has done wonders for my temps, especially the arm's, I was having issue due to my vrm getting too hot with the stock cooler, not anymore with the twin turbo pro. Start taking responsibility for your actions and stop trying to tear down good products because you were unable to install/use it correctly.
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How are those tiny heatsinks supposed to cool the VRMs? The cooler does wonders for the core but all there were for VRMs were two small heatsinks.

Regardless of bad engineering and bad thermal tape that came stock with the unit, both the fans shorted out within a few months of ownership as well and nearly took my card with them except I noticed the spike in temps in time. (the thing does run damn quiet afterall which was why I got it originally).

For the 5870, the Twin Turbo Pro simply does not work as a long term solution despite it being advertised as compatible. For the 5850 and 6870 and 6950, it may be a great cooler because you can use the existing front plate.

Also, I've owned THIRTEEN 5870s. All of the reference design or blower cards are significantly cooler and have much lower VRM temperatures than cards I tried the Twin Turbo with and cards that use axial fan designs. The Accelero Xtreme 5870 learned from the Twin Turbo's mistakes and come with a beefier VRM cooler. This is not an isolated case and my point about reference coolers is not based on a single card. I have a bigger sample size than most people.
 
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Why not try another cooler? Or maybe a newer accelero model? It sounds like you got a bad unit. I know you say you've gotten used to the noise, but I'm sure you would still like to be able to play silently. Not to mention, if you're getting 70C load with a stock cooler, you could well be in the 50s with a good aftermarket cooling solution...especially given your depth of experience.
 
shantd said:
Why not try another cooler? Or maybe a newer accelero model? It sounds like you got a bad unit. I know you say you've gotten used to the noise, but I'm sure you would still like to be able to play silently. Not to mention, if you're getting 70C load with a stock cooler, you could well be in the 50s with a good aftermarket cooling solution...especially given your depth of experience.
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I don't care about the core temperatures much. When overclocking, it's the VRMs that were the lynchpin because every slight bump in voltage resulted in a huge jump in VRM temperatures without adequate VRM cooling.

The real solution would have been the VRM-4 + Accellero but the VRM-4 won't fit with crossfire since it's so big. The alternative is watercooling.

With the Accellero Twin Turbo with the VRM sinks that came with the card, the card maxed out at around 900MHz because the VRMs would overheat in about 20 minutes of gameplay at anything higher. With the reference cooler replaced, I could crank the voltage up to 1300mv and get the card to run at 1100MHz. Also, ultimately because even at maximum speed the Accellero's 92mm fans are not that fast, and because the hot air was dumped back into the case, even with a 140mm exhaust fan by the card, I actually get lower temperatures over time with the reference cooler. This is the same case with the twin fan design Gigabyte 5870s that I have. They run quiet which is nice, but they run hotter and overclock less.

I'm now running tri-fire and basically, if I depended on axial fan coolers, they would just be feeling hot air to each other even with the best case intake and exhaust solution. Also, it was my experience that axial fan cards cannot be close to each other in Crossfire so you need a motherboard with huge spacing. Blower fan reference coolers can be touching each other and still work because of the nature of centrifugal fans and the amount of static pressure they provide. Axial fans have low static pressure and require a lot of clearance above and below the fan or it just spins and doesn't move any air.
 
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your experience has been pretty bad, my experience has been great. My 6870 looks like your picture and my temps are much better then they were with stock cooling and the fan going at 100%. While gaming the fans on the twin turbo have never gone over 31%, and still cools my card by 20c vs stock cooling.
 
I didn't want to make a new thread so am breathing some life back into this one. I finally got around to changing the fan profiles on my cooler. I have it set to ramp up to 60% at 60 in afterburner and my temps don't higher then 62c core, 63c memory. I was getting up to 68c with stock fan profile,lesson learned. I also can not hear a difference between the original profile and new. I love my arctic cooling accellero twin turbo pro.
 
magoo said:
Yep, it's the block. Yep, you need the gear to go with it.

Idle, once the system comes to equilibrium is 40C.......but full work, which includes two HD blocks, a 6950 and a 6990 AND the CPU, an OC'd 930 (4.1 GHz) the temp rarely sees 55C and of course, the only noise I hear are case fans and radiator fans.

Normal temps on the stock coolers were 35-38C in 2D and 75-78C in full 3D load.:D
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Yo magoo, how much radiator in that loop??
 
Anyone know how long an HD 6970 with an Accelero XTREME Plus II mounted to it becomes?

If it's longer than 30cm...is there a shorter aftermarket cooler that'll do the trick?
 
Unknown-One said:
Anyone know how long an HD 6970 with an Accelero XTREME Plus II mounted to it becomes?

If it's longer than 30cm...is there a shorter aftermarket cooler that'll do the trick?
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I have one and it does not add much. You will probably have to get a VGA support bracket, or, ghetto it and support it with a pencil from below like I did so it does not bend too much. That being said, my cooler is awesome and very, very quiet.
 
SilverSliver said:
I have one and it does not add much. You will probably have to get a VGA support bracket, or, ghetto it and support it with a pencil from below like I did so it does not bend too much. That being said, my cooler is awesome and very, very quiet.
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Well, that's good to hear. Does the Accelero XTREME Plus II come with all the extra heatsinks required for an HD 6970 installation, or does it need an additional heatsink package like the original Accelero XTREME Plus?

Edit: I really do need to know how long it makes the card. I'm trying to cram it into a Fractal Design Define R3, and there already isn't much room left at the end of a stock HD 6970...
 
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Slight bump... Looks like the Accelero XTREME Plus II is simply too long, and wont physically fit in my case.

Will the Accelero Twin Turbo Pro, or Accelero Twin Turbo II fit on an HD 6970 and cool it adequately? It looks like it should, but has anyone tried it?
 
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30cm is roughly the limit. I'd have to cut out some of my drive cage in order to fit the Accelero XTREME Plus II.

Doesn't matter anymore, I went ahead and ordered an Accelero Twin Turbo II. It has a cooling capacity of up to 250w (HD 6970 is 190w) and it is listed as compatible with the HD 6950 (which uses the same PCB as the HD 6970) so it should be all good...
 
I'm using that cooler check my sig it works great and is super quiet! I don't see load temps over 60c and I didn't even bother to install the ram sinks.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
I'm using that cooler check my sig it works great and is super quiet! I don't see load temps over 60c and I didn't even bother to install the ram sinks.
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Er, your sig says you have an Accelero Twin Turbo Pro, not an Accelero Twin Turbo II. >_>
 
Would be awesome if Corsair made some coolers like the H series for GPUs. I am sure they could do something along the lines of creating a base then selling brackets for a particular series of graphics cards, as long as performance permitted.
 
I can think of one way to do a simple "Corsair H60-like" GPU cooler that will fit a wide range of cards...

- Use a standard H60, include extra mounting plates so it fits most graphics cards. This will cool the GPU itself.
- Include an assortment of heatsinks and thermal glue to affix them to the memory and VRM modules.
- Finally, include a silent crossflow fan to keep all the smaller chips cool. This will clip the the end of the graphics card.

The GPU should stay very cold, and the memory chips and VRMs should stay fairly cool since the air running over their heatsinks didn't just get blown through a hot heatsink. A novice moder could probably build this type of setup with off-the-shelf parts (and one machined metal plate).
 
I've got a Gelid Icy Vision Rev2 with the Radeon 6900 VRM upgrade kit.
Keeps my 6950 (unlocked shaders) under 55C on load in gaming and just about 62C with Furmark's burn-in tests.

I've got my card overclocked to 900/1450 right now with stock voltage, but I'm working on getting it higher, so far so good at 975/1450 with a higher voltage of 1.225v.

VRMs are kept cool too, sub 50C on load during gaming.

It's not the quietest cooler, but that's why I have it connected to my 650D's fan controller...
 
Unknown-One said:
Er, your sig says you have an Accelero Twin Turbo Pro, not an Accelero Twin Turbo II. >_>
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Yes that is what you should be using :p

Other one is way to long and better suited for a dual gpu card.

The Twin Turbo Pro supports the 5870 and last I checked the 6970 doesn't put out more heat than that.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
Unknown-One said:
Makaveli@BETA said:
30cm is roughly the limit. I'd have to cut out some of my drive cage in order to fit the Accelero XTREME Plus II.

Doesn't matter anymore, I went ahead and ordered an Accelero Twin Turbo II. It has a cooling capacity of up to 250w (HD 6970 is 190w) and it is listed as compatible with the HD 6950 (which uses the same PCB as the HD 6970) so it should be all good...
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I'm using that cooler check my sig it works great and is super quiet! I don't see load temps over 60c and I didn't even bother to install the ram sinks.
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Er, your sig says you have an Accelero Twin Turbo Pro, not an Accelero Twin Turbo II. >_>
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Yes that is what you should be using :p

Other one is way to long and better suited for a dual gpu card.

The Twin Turbo Pro supports the 5870 and last I checked the 6970 doesn't put out more heat than that.
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Uh, what? Why on earth would I want to use the (much older) Twin Turbo pro? The Twin Turbo II's cooling capacity is larger, and it includes all the additional heatsinks needed for the 6950 / 6970.

The Twin Turbo II is exactly the same length as the Twin Turbo Pro. I think you're confusing the Twin Turbo II with the EXTREME Plus II, which has three fans rather than two.

The 5970 has a TDP of 188w, the 6970 has a TDP of 190w. The Twin Turbo Pro can cool both of them adequately, but the Twin Turbo II has a lot more headroom. As for dual GPU cards, again, what on earth are you talking about? None of the coolers we've discussed thus far will fit a dual-GPU card, and in fact, the only one in the Accelero Linup that can is the special edition Accelero EXTREME 5970.
 
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Unknown-One said:
Uh, what? Why on earth would I want to use the (much older) Twin Turbo pro? The Twin Turbo II's cooling capacity is larger, and it includes all the additional heatsinks needed for the 6950 / 6970.

The Twin Turbo II is exactly the same length as the Twin Turbo Pro. I think you're confusing the Twin Turbo II with the EXTREME Plus II, which has three fans rather than two.

The 5970 has a TDP of 188w, the 6970 has a TDP of 190w. The Twin Turbo Pro can cool both of them adequately, but the Twin Turbo II has a lot more headroom. As for dual GPU cards, again, what on earth are you talking about? None of the coolers we've discussed thus far will fit a dual-GPU card, and in fact, the only one in the Accelero Linup that can is the special edition Accelero EXTREME 5970.
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lol relax dude I thought you were speaking about the Xtreme Plus II.

I haven't looked at the Twin Turbo two until your link it does look to be a newer version of the Pro.

And when I was referring to the Dual gpu cards I was speaking about the Xtreme plus being fitted on a 6990 or 5970 class card.
 
ANY card regardless of it's amazing cooling WILL GET HOT if you don't have a ventilated case.

You can put any high end card in a minitower and it'll rocked up to 100C in minutes...
 
Alright, I went ahead and fitted the Twin Turbo II to my HD 6970, gave it a mild overclock, set the fan speed to 100% (which is still silent), then ran MSI Kombustor (Furmark) to heat it up. Here are the results.

5ZYyn.jpg


The card used to IDLE at that temperature with the stock heatsink, now it can't push past it fully loaded and overclocked. I'd call that a success.
 
Unknown-One said:
Alright, I went ahead and fitted the Twin Turbo II to my HD 6970, gave it a mild overclock, set the fan speed to 100% (which is still silent), then ran MSI Kombustor (Furmark) to heat it up. Here are the results.

The card used to IDLE at that temperature with the stock heatsink, now it can't push past it fully loaded and overclocked. I'd call that a success.
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Wow, that's great. And the good news is that there is no game out there which will tax your 6970 to the extent that Furmark does. So you're probably looking at high 60s during gaming. Can't really ask for more than that. I'm a bit surprised you can get that much cooling with your fans topping out at 2,000 RPM. My stock 6970 fan can hit 6,000RPM and still won't cool that well.

- How long had you been running Furmark at that point?
- Where'd you order the twin turbo II from, and how much was it?
- Did you have any issues removing the shroud, or any issues installing the fan?
 
The stock cooler at 6000 is pretty powerful, i've not managed to get load temps much over 40-42C with it.
 
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