Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev.2 @ [H]

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev.2 - Inexpensive cooling for a hotter than hell 8800 GT sound like a good idea? Many have probably considered the Accelero S1 but might have been confused by the low price. For around US$25 this might be the best video card insurance you ever bought.

An Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 with good airflow represents what can easily be called one of the best values in today’s high-end aftermarket GPU coolers. While it does not provide the absolute best cooling in the market, it surely represents a very good GPU cooler. You would be remiss if you did not consider this product on an enthusiast build of any budget.
 
I hope they send [H]ard an Accelero Xtreme 8800 next to check out. I haven't seen any reviews for it anywhere yet..

And a shout-out to ECS for packing their cards with the Accerelo stock:

8800GT

9600GT

I've got the 8800GT model and it's working great. Wish I would have waited a month..I got burned by the 9600GT release. (although I feel better cause its been out of stock)
 
I've been running my S1 (rev 1) for a few months now, but using a 120mm Scythe instead of the turbo modules and it has been awesome.

I've seen a 20+ degree drop (load) and since I'm using a 120mm fan the noise is negligible. This is a phenomenal deal: cheap and effective!
 
I purchased my Accelero S1 Rev.1 about a week before reading about it [H]ere and have been extremely happy about my purchase ever since. The cooler is mounted to my 8800GT that has been volt modded for the extra 0.05v and is running passive. The card is OCed from its stock speed of 650/1675/900 to 740/1850/1010 and never gets above 65 C with ATiTool. I have the turbo module (on the shelf, not in use) but I'm happy with my temps as they are and haven't felt the need for it. In game my temps never seem to get above 55 C since ATiTool seems to stress the GPU more-so than a game will. The card is paired with my ThermalTake Armour case and its 25 CM side fan. :p The side fan makes all the difference in the world while running the cooler passively I believe.

I did take my Dremel to the supplied voltage regulator heatsink for the ATi cards and cut it down into 4 pieces. I then cleaned up the edges and mounted 3 of them on to the GT's voltage regulators. I imagine this is crucial since NVidia does cool these chips with the stock cooler.

I recommend this cooler to ANYONE who wants to quiet down their G92/94 based card and can find it.

Anyone who wants pictures of my process can PM and I'll be glad to send them over.
 
I love the heatsink reviews at [H]! If I buy an 8800GT I'm definitely considering the Accelero S1.

That 9600GT that coynatha linked to is the cheapest 9600GT I've seen, and comes with an Accelero!!! Hope Newegg gets that back into stock with the $150 price tag. That could make for some awesome SLI. Not only that, with the Accelero and the cool running 9600GT I'd be willing to bet you could get decent temps with passive cooling if your case had enough airflow.
 
Accelero S1 Rev2 Is so good i can't believe it was only 25 bucks....I use mine in passive mode and never see anything over 50 c....ever.
 
At this point what more could you ask for? It is a great cooler at a great price. AC has a winner on their hands!
 
Just another FYI, the AC S1 works just fine with Crossfire as long as you only need a single cable...the cable will slip easily between the fins on the edge of the S1.

If you need to run two Crossfire cables (older, pre-3xxx series cards), it'll still work, but it requires bending fins by the first heatpipe to make room to feed through the cable end of the second cable, then bending them back into place. The cable will be kinked a bit by the heatpipe, and the fins will never be 100% straight, making the whole deal a bit ugly, but it works.

BTW, been running a pair of them since November, my overclocked 3870's stay at 38/33c in 21c ambient idle, and never ever hit 60c under load, even with hours of COD4. Still using the stock mem/vreg coolers on the cards too.
 
Great review as always guys; any chance in seeing an 'Akinbo' cooler review anytime in the near future? Or is that just a (G92) GTS cooler with a new sticker?
 
Great review as always guys; any chance in seeing an 'Akinbo' cooler review anytime in the near future? Or is that just a (G92) GTS cooler with a new sticker?

Have asked EVGA if it would like to supply a sample. We'll see.
 
hmmm... weird... i'm getting about 43-45C idle and 59-61C load with mine... 650/1620/950... that's passive, no turbo kit, 2 case fans pulling air out of my sg03. i ran it once with no fans on except my psu fan. pure silent bliss. my 7200.10 was the loudest thing in the case. i was able to play gobs of warrock just fine, but about 20 minutes into crysis temps hit 87C. i stopped at that point. i remember my stock evga 8800gt hitting 90c's regularly with the stock fan though... that was scary.
 
How are you guys stressing this with ATITool? I cant find it anywhere. Maybe im just a n00b. And it works in vista despite what the website says. It's just bitchy like everything else is lol.
 
Hey Kyle,

any way you can send me over a Hi-Res copy of the first picture?

the front of the unopened package...

I see we're listed on there under the awards and I'd like a copy for keepsake purposes...

I got it for review when it first came out so it didn't have the 'awards' sticker on it...

Thanks in advance

and to comment on the prodcut itself it is a great cooler, just really big!

Kyle you guys should hit up Coolink, their new GFXChilla is really good... compares to this Accelero but it's a lot smaller, and allows for SLI also
 
I cannot say how much I love my Accelero S1 Rev 2. It was VERY easy to install (Though as a tip, make sure to hold the ram sinks on there for as long as possible, they don't stick well or quickly), and cools very well.
See my own little review here (ignore the typo in the title)
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1278864

PS: Kyle, when i did this test of my own, I saw that it took a VERY long time for the card to cool down. What kind of experience did you have with this?
 
I've been using the S1 Rev 1 on my EVGA 8800GT SC for quite some time now in a passive configuration with MUCH better numbers than stock. Outstanding cooling at a low price!
 
So when you tested the card in passive mode this was also with the motherboard on the benchtop?

I think that the restults might be a bit different if this were in a case where the heat from the GPU might not dissipate into the (nearly) infinite space of the room rather than a relatively small case. I know that my accelero does a great job of cooling my 8800gt but attention needs to be paid to exhaust the hot air outside of the case otherwise it turns into an oven.
 
I hope they send [H]ard an Accelero Xtreme 8800 next to check out. I haven't seen any reviews for it anywhere yet..

And a shout-out to ECS for packing their cards with the Accerelo stock:

8800GT

9600GT

I've got the 8800GT model and it's working great. Wish I would have waited a month..I got burned by the 9600GT release. (although I feel better cause its been out of stock)


We did a review of the 8800 Extreme, posted it the day it was officially released actually..... tested on an 8800gts 640

review is HERE if you want to read it


edit.. apology.. didn't mean to hijack thread, hope it's not taken that way...
 
Thnx dracos. I see they have you listed in the "Awards" section on the product page. I dunno if that was there when I was hunting for reviews.
 
I installed one of the V1 and it was a great thing when I kept wondering if the fans were running. Silent

42C max load on BFG OC 8800GT

the web page says they don't feel that you need the extra sinks on the chips but I put some on there as well.

What is the major difference in V1 and V2


ps I installed everything after reading a great post on H forms..
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1261100&highlight=accelero by Blue Falcon



GREAT read and if I can install it anyone can.
 
Is it possible to slip the turbo module in between the card and the sink instead of putting the fans on the outside of the sink?

And while I miss the old AC silencer design, where the heat exhausted out the back of the case, i'm glad to see AC is continuing to make VERY affordable coolers.

Solid review guys!
 
Awesome review, my only complaint is that the passive tests just seem to have been done wrong. They should have been done in a case with negative pressure as Arctic Cooling recommends. You'll see that the passive results here don't jive with most of our experiences running the Accelero S1. :)

Nice to see the thing finally reviewed at [H]ard|OCP though, it definitely deserves that gold award!
 
Gold Award?

Deservedly so. <3 mine. :)

Props to Marc Adams for an awesome review.
 
"...overclocked settings of 700/1000."

Was it possible to get anything else? I managed that on stock 88GT coolers. My current GTS hits around 756/1890/1100(2200) w/ 50% fan. Considering it dumps all the heat out of the case, I just don't think a cooler's necessary unless your short on airflow. I do like that the RAM sinks don't get shafted as on the HR-03 series.
 
Well just like the [H]

Out of stock on both sites :p

Ohh well... I'll get it soon enough.

 
Wow, now that's [H]ard! This review actually covered almost every cooler compatible with an 8800GT! (At least every cooler currently for sale, not the older ones..) By the way, it seems that Thermalright's V2 is very UN-POPULAR.... perhaps because $40 without a fan is just not worth it when it could be as cheap as Accelero's S1.

Way to go, and keep it up!

I'm curious about the monster one from Accelero--the one with 3 120mm fans--if it would beat Thermalright's HR-03 Plus on my 8800GTX. I'm also curious about Zerotherm's Hurricane 8800Cu performance, if it is actually worth it over this stock cooler which is already pretty quite and good performing (never goes above 87 degrees after being used to X1900XTX running at 95+ degrees for so long).
 
hmmm... weird... i'm getting about 43-45C idle and 59-61C load with mine... 650/1620/950... that's passive, no turbo kit, 2 case fans pulling air out of my sg03. i ran it once with no fans on except my psu fan. pure silent bliss. my 7200.10 was the loudest thing in the case. i was able to play gobs of warrock just fine, but about 20 minutes into crysis temps hit 87C. i stopped at that point. i remember my stock evga 8800gt hitting 90c's regularly with the stock fan though... that was scary.

That's pretty much spot on with the temps that I get with my 8800gt passively. I think the HardOCP test is flawed because they test it outside of the case where the airflow is almost zero. In a case with decent airflow, the results should be vastly improved.

Just for reference, on my case, i have a 120mm fan in back (@1000rpm) and a 92mm fan in front (@1000rpm). My system is built to be quiet but it still manages to gets enough airflow to properly cool the 8800gt. Big improvement over the stock cooling.
 
Did the long voltage regulator heatsink that is supplied in the package not give a full coverage of the voltage regulator chips on the 8800 GT, and that is why you decided to use the two green heatsinks for the voltage regulators? In the review you don't say why the packaged one didn't work, just that you didn't use it. Great review otherwise. I'm definately going to consider this GPU heatsink on my next build.
 
The biggest advantage this have over my Thermalright is that it doesn't eat up alot of space. My Thermalright with the fans rendered almost all my PCI totally useless except for one. No room for my soundcard.
 
That's pretty much spot on with the temps that I get with my 8800gt passively. I think the HardOCP test is flawed because they test it outside of the case where the airflow is almost zero. In a case with decent airflow, the results should be vastly improved.

Well, he does say that they placed a Noctua low speed fan near the card to replicate the airflow inside your case in a passive configuration, but obviously something is missing because it doesn't seem to replicate the results that most of us have gotten when we run the cooler on out 8800GT passively. *shrug*

Still an awesome review. :)
 
As for the passive test being flawed.....you guys have to look at this realistically when comparing to your own experiences. We can put the thing in a case and it is highly likely that our results are STILL not going to be close to yours. The fact of the matter is that there are simply too many variables in the mix. We tell you exactly the way that was tested and give you a very good basis for comparing the units that we tested. Quite frankly, I think our version is a "worst case scenario" and that is the approach we take with a lot of products around here. You would not believe how much heat we have to fade when one guy buys a product and it performs 10X WORSE for his particular setup. He then goes to a million forums and posts how bad we suck and don't know what we are talking about etc etc etc...

We give all of our testing full transparency so YOU can make up YOUR own mind about YOUR situation.
 
Yeah, I get that much and I'm not saying the test was done wrong. I totally agree that in order to keep the test scientific and repeatable, it doesn't make sense to put it in a case because every case, setup, wiring, other hardware, fan speeds etc the variables are infinite. Although these tests are done to compare one product to another, at the same time it should still be noted that what the end user would see will likely be different by a greater degree than a non-passive setup would likely be.
 
hehe Kyle, those were my thoughts exactly when I saw your temps, since mine are waaaaay lower with the S1.
My case has one single 120mm intake fan and the 8800GT never gets hotter than 60°C even after very long gaming sessions. Thats without any additional fan or turbo module, but 2 slot covers open beneath the gfx card. And with AS5.

Oh, and my Voltage regulators don´t have any heatsinks on them at all and they work just fine.
As a matter of fact, several companies who use this heatsink on their cards don´t cool the VRMs at all, too.
And I don´t cool them on my second 8800gt which uses a NV Silencer Rev.3 (yes, it fits!) where they get patially obscured by the overhanging fan - yet no problem so far (got the card in early december).
 
Would it be possible to test this in a closed case?
I dislike coolers that just reguritates the air inside the case, as in my experience they tend to raise the temps inside the case.

Either that or please look at coolers that EXHAUST the hot air outside the case...if it isn't to much trouble?
 
Nice review but Im wondering if the fact fact that you didnt test in a case affected anything. Wouldnt the passive results be a bit better with the "Negative pressure" of a ventilated case or whatever?

Anyway, could we get that Xigmatek HDT-S1283 CPU cooler as the next cooling review? Its a ripoff of the Thermalright design but cheaper. Some sites say its great but theyre always missing comparisons to a wide enough range of other coolers.
 
I'm not sure you tested this in passive mode the way that you should. I have my card below running passive at 740/1100 and I can run ATITool for half an hour and it's max temp is 70C. All I did was open the slot below the card so that the negative pressure in my case pulled cool air across the massive fins of the S1. And this is with just one Yate Loon fan drawing air out of the case at just 850 RPM! :eek:

I haven't been this satisfied with a product in a long time. It flat out works. If you can find one!
 
The questions were answered concerning the testing method. Passive or on air. Its as transparent as glass.

Good work [H]!

Thanks
 
The problem is that slight variations in testing methods can lead to huge differences in results.
p.ex. some review sites claim that the Xigmatek HDT1283 will beat the crap out of the Thermalright Ultra120, yet others state that it doesn´t come close. Even if they both bench in closed cases.
Reason: The Xigmatek wins when a 65nm CPU is being used and loses if a 45nm core works under the hood. Due to the smaller die size the heat doesn´t get transfered to all pipes when using its direct-touch-technique.

Same here, a small change in setup can lead to drasticalle higher temps. On the card of a friend the cooler was sitting on one capacitor. He thought that it would fit, but while fastening the screws the pressure wasn´t applied evenly all across the core.
Result: over 90°C under load.
He then cut a piece of the fin out and remounted the cooler.
Result: less than 60°C under load.
and it didn´t appear bent or mounted at an angle at all.
 
I just ordered this cooler + turbo module from Ncix on sunday night and it came in today w00t =)

Only problem is I forgot to add the MX2 paste to the Order Doh!

Anyone know any stores in Toronto that carry that paste? if not i'll have to create another order just for it :(
 
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