Arctic Accelero Xtreme IV

[pandora's box]

Arctic Accelero Xtreme IV. No pics of them installed yet as I'm waiting on a Fractal Design Define XL R2, which should be here tomorrow. My current case isn't big enough

I have to say this is the easiest aftermarket cooler I have ever installed. No awkward angles to fiddle with, simply install the thermal tape on the back of the card, attach the screws to the front heatsink, feed front heatsink through the card, attach back plate, tighten down, secure clamps to side of card, and done.

With one card installed at GPU at 1270MHz core, Mem not overclocked I'm getting 26C idle (down from 34C) and 56C load (Down from 92C). Previous load temps were with the card at 1170MHz core, any higher and it would crash and I had to have the fan at 100%, very loud, though this was with 2 cards in SLI, will have to wait till tomorrow to see if I can achieve 1270MHz in SLI.

The main reason for me doing this is the noise at load with 2 780 Ti's overclocked is a little annoying to say the least. I have open-ear headphones and I can hear the cards while I'm gaming. Can't here the fans on this even at 100%.

 

[bighead462]

Looks good. I had some of their some Accelero S2 heatsinks on my Crossfired Radeon 4870s back in the day and they worked out well.

Unfortunately I just found out that Arctic's warranty is garbage. I'm a reseller and I just tried to RMA a damaged Freezer 7 Pro through them. Even though they advertise a 6-year warranty they will not deal with resellers or end-users directly. They make you go through the distributer instead. All the distributers only have 1-year warranties max. If your Arctic product is over the warranty provided by your reseller or distributer you are SOL. I don't think that any distributer will honor a 6-year warranty just because Arctic puts a sticker on the box. You would expect Arctic to honor it, but it says on their website (http://www.arctic.ac/en/support/rma-flowchart.htm) that " ARCTIC doesn't offer a manufacturer warranty." They don't even list a phone number on their site, and I e-mailed them twice without a response. Pretty shady if you ask me. Luckily my distributer is taking the fan back for exchange.

 

[xoleras]

I've tried two of these in the past (Accelero coolers) and had temperature issues. In a single card configuration they were awesome - I had like, 45C load GPU temps and 100% fans were quiet on those things. I really think that reference is best for mGPU, what happened with me when using sandwiched accelero coolers is that the upper card would slowly get a temperature "creep" over time which I could not solve. The lower card will cause your upper card to get hotter, and if you sandwich these coolers you can't really mitigate that. The upper card will just get hotter and hotter over time and eventually cause a system crash. When I played a game temps would start out at like 60C on both cards. 30 minutes later? Upper card even with 100% fan would get extremely hot VRMs and crash. GPU temp would be like, 90C or something along those lines due to the heat from the lower card being dumped on the upper. (This was with 7970s, BTW)

That's why I always recommend reference blower for SLI or mGPU. Unless you have x79 - x79 gives you more slot flexibility. If you're on z87, z77 or z68 you won't have slot flexibility and usually will have to sandwich them if you have a non PLX (workstation) motherboard. And that will cause temperature issues, usually. How long it takes to crash ? It might be 30 minutes, 1 hour, dunno.

Just giving you a heads up! YMMV of course, maybe you won't have this problem. If they're sandwiched together, though, I feel like you will almost certainly have temp issues......I had this problem in a CM COSMOS II EATX case with 12 fans. But, perhaps you have an x79 platform and that way you can spread the cards out a lot. I'm not sure. Hopefully it'll work out for you, and I hope it does, keep us up to date. Good luck!

 

[Unknown-One]

This cooler comes with absolutely nothing to cool the RAM or VRMs... I'm having trouble seeing how that backplate will prevent your card from burning to a crisp.

 

[pandora's box]

This cooler comes with absolutely nothing to cool the RAM or VRMs... I'm having trouble seeing how that backplate will prevent your card from burning to a crisp.

There are thermal pads on the back of the card where the VRM and memory chips are, and the backplate pulls the heat off. I have had one card running Unigine heaven for 2 hours now, no issues.

 

[pandora's box]

Clocked the cards to 1240MHz, 7GHz mem. Top card tops out at 68C, bottom 57C. :drool:

 

[Unknown-One]

There are thermal pads on the back of the card where the VRM and memory chips are, and the backplate pulls the heat off. I have had one card running Unigine heaven for 2 hours now, no issues.

Sounds like it would be worse than heatsinks directly attached to the RAM and VRMs, in every way possible.

Clocked the cards to 1240MHz, 7GHz mem. Top card tops out at 68C, bottom 57C. :drool:

And are your VRM temps better or worse than with direct cooling?

These cards don't have built-in temp probes for the VRMs, so if you installed those coolers without taking measurements with an IR temp gun... that's one hell of a leap of faith.

 

[BullseyeBob]

Looks pretty dang sexy. Hope they work good for you.

 

[HOODedDutchman]

Nuts to not have any vrm heat dissipation. Vram is understandable as they should be able to tolerate just fan blowing over them. Vrm no. Stock cooler for 780ti is so good your crazy to buy these for them. Only thing that cooler is good for is 290 (x) and only if you throw some heatsink on the vrm. And only in single card. Look at that size of it with that backplate they take up more than 4 slots. Looks so dumb. Looks like intense overkill but you could easily get same temps with stock cooler and same amount of noise with a quick bump in fan speed. Stock cooler would have way better vrm and vram temps to. Not to mention the strain of 5lb gpu on those pcie slots lol.

 

[Tup3x]

This is rather idiotic cooler - no VRM or memory heat sinks at all. I fail to see the point of that back plate.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

I have an Accelero Hybrid on my GTX 480 and the only complaint I had was that they did not include a backplate to support the card. When I installed it, there was obvious bowing of the circuit board, so I did what any good [H] member would: tied it up with string then posted pics in the ghetto mods thread

I have since moved the card to a different case, where I was able to mount the motherboard in an inverted fashion. The card no longer requires the additional support and the circuit board no longer bows from the weight of the cooling assembly.

I get 60C max load temps running Furmark at 1080p max settings, down from 95+ with the stock EVGA cooler. AC included glue-on aluminum heatsinks for the RAM and VRMs, but due to the placement of the VRMs on the 480 circuit board, there is no way to mount the heatsinks on the VRMs without modifying the fan assembly. The VRMs have partial heatsink coverage and an 80mm fan that blows air over them and the RAM heatsinks. The stock EVGA cooler didn't even have thermal pads or any part of the heatsink touching some of the VRMs.

I checked the VRM temps with an IR thermometer and they were in the 50s C under Furmark load, which according to the guys on the EVGA forums is well within their safe zone. They are actually cooler than what they said were the normal operating temps with the stock cooler.

To Bighead462: sorry to hear about the bad experience. Now I hope nothing breaks on my Accelero...

 

[Unknown-One]

This is rather idiotic cooler - no VRM or memory heat sinks at all. I fail to see the point of that back plate.

The Accelero Hybrid II is even more daft: http://www.arctic.ac/us_en/products/cooling/vga/accelero-hybrid-ii-120.html

Entire front of the card remains exposed. No heatsinks, no fans, nothing keeps the VRMs and RAM cool. All they have is the backplate on the opposite side of the PCB (which is a huge slab of metal, and passive, so it's going to act more like a heat-soak).

 

[SilverSliver]

As long as you don't mine with that set-up, you will be fine. Bare VRM's on a 780 Ti will be fried with extended Cudaminer usage.

 

[Unknown-One]

It just seems like a recipe for disaster, especially the Accelero Hybrid II. It'll produce extremely low core temps, tempting people into overclocking and over-volting...without proper VRM cooling.

 

[Tup3x]

Yeah. They clearly aim these for overclockers yet I can already imagine what issues people will have when they put this on 290 series cards and start overclocking... Also it looks like people will likely over tighten those back plate screws. Combine that with the massive heat from heatsinkless vrm area and I have a feeling that things get nasty.

 

[pandora's box]

Yeah. They clearly aim these for overclockers yet I can already imagine what issues people will have when they put this on 290 series cards and start overclocking... Also it looks like people will likely over tighten those back plate screws. Combine that with the massive heat from heatsinkless vrm area and I have a feeling that things get nasty.

In regards to the screws on the backplate: Yes it is a poor design. Having lots of experience installing coolers, I was aware not to over tighten. Can easily see people cracking the core of their card.

Also I installed heatsinks on the VRM chips yesterday