Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 5970 now available!

Tyson95 said:
Arctic Cooling killed my 4870X2! Did they actually send the proper screws for this cooler? I wish HardOCP could do a review and possibly expose how Arctic Cooling ruins their customers hardware.
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There were no screws this time. You use the stock screws and back-plate.
 
I haven't been able to get any replies from their support/info/sales people, so I just sent another email directly to their CEO and to their Marketing Executive.

btw, I received mine today, and it arrived in poor condition. The product package is just big enough to hold the product, and it has heat pipes pressed against the ends of the package. The heatsink plate is pressed against the side of the package with just a thin piece of cardboard and plastic to protect it.

I'm sure their product retail packaging would have been fine, BUT ... the product package is 11.5" long, and it was stuffed in a shipping box that was only 11" long. By the time the box arrived at my door, it had been crushed several times, and it looks like every panel on the box had been kicked repeatedly. I'm not going to install this on my $710 5970 VGA card.

Guess I'll give Arctic Cooling a week to reply to my emails, and if they don't, I'll take whatever action is necessary to quickly resolve this issue. :)
 
The AC standing packaging for their products is flimsy as heck. It's fine for retail store shelves but needs to be packed better for shipping. That is disappointing.
 
i've used arctic cooling on my vga cards in the past (x800xt i think). its a shame its causing issues now. i always thought that perhaps vga cards are becoming too complex to remove the stock cooler and replace with a third party one. far to easy to unknowingly damage the card. guess my hunch was right. i guess when i get my 5870 i'll just have to settle for the stock cooler ;).

thanks for this thread.
 
matrix563 said:
i've used arctic cooling on my vga cards in the past (x800xt i think). its a shame its causing issues now. i always thought that perhaps vga cards are becoming too complex to remove the stock cooler and replace with a third party one. far to easy to unknowingly damage the card. guess my hunch was right. i guess when i get my 5870 i'll just have to settle for the stock cooler ;).

thanks for this thread.
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Should this AC cooler be no good, I may look into Danger Den's waterblock...they are at least more reputable and based in the US.
 
I still haven't heard anything back from Artic Cooling. Is this something we can contact our credit card companies about to start a charge back?
 
thanks geekusa. maybe i'll be able to get a response from that address.
 
Welll i got my second 5970 back i was really lucky that i could still exchange my defective card.

From all this situation i guess i got lucky in the end with the new card runs at 900/1200 at 1.10v rock solid on stock heatsink.

I really wanted to try to install the AC heatink again but i'm just to afraid luck cant run for ever...

I just cant risk bricking another card i rather take a $110 loss and never use this company ever again.

One thing i noticed is that the Accelero did not make proper contact on both gpus, when i lift the sink of the card you could see that paste was not spread over whole surface, even though the temperature was god for first 15min the card ran before it fried itself.

I looked at it really close and i did not see anything that would cause damage, but you could see the sink was bending in some parts from tighten the screws, so maybe something got cracked inside the chips no idea...

Anyways as much as i would really like to make this sink work i will give up its just to risky.
 
@ ga23: are your heatsinks and mounting plate completely flat? when i had mine out of the package last night, i noticed that the mounting plate was not flat - could see that it was warped with naked eye. it's bowed outwards in the middle. i used an item with a flat edge to confirm that it was bowed. i didn't know if that was a manufacturing defect, intentional design, or damage that occurred during shipping.
 
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jkw said:
@ ga23: are your heatsinks and mounting plate completely flat? when i had mine out of the package last night, i noticed that the mounting plate was not flat - could see that it was warped with naked eye. it's bowed outwards in the middle. i used an item with a flat edge to confirm that it was bowed. i didn't know if that was a manufacturing defect, intentional design, or damage that occurred during shipping.
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You are right i checked it my self and it is warped its not totally flat i really don't know if its manufacturer defect or on purpose like that, but definitely its not flat....
 
That sucks, I know my Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo Pro is not bowed, it's pretty flat.
 
gamingarena23 said:
You are right i checked it my self and it is warped its not totally flat i really don't know if its manufacturer defect or on purpose like that, but definitely its not flat....
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I'm going to email their eshop to see about returning mine ASAP, but I'll raise the question. Anyone having any luck getting replies from AC that aren't just "you suck at installing this, our cooler is perfect"? They've not replied to my inquiries.
 
Saw a few people saying their card has the cooler on it working, so I tried. NUmber 4 with no DVI here. An DVI->analog converter lets me use the card, but the digital outputs are toast. Fuck you, arctic cooling. The instructions were garbage, the pads were in poor condition in the packaging as well.

Never buying AC products again, and I'm going to see about making them refund me my money, and buy me a new card.

Fuck this shit.
 
rampantandroid said:
Saw a few people saying their card has the cooler on it working, so I tried. NUmber 4 with no DVI here. An DVI->analog converter lets me use the card, but the digital outputs are toast. Fuck you, arctic cooling. The instructions were garbage, the pads were in poor condition in the packaging as well.

Never buying AC products again, and I'm going to see about making them refund me my money, and buy me a new card.

Fuck this shit.
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Damn

After reading the guy had it working on guru3d i almost tried my luck again with my new card can't stand the original fan noise..
But now reading your post and having same problems as rest of us i'm convinced that that this POS is purely designed.

We should get our money in full and paid for damage cards...
 
gamingarena23 said:
Damn

After reading the guy had it working on guru3d i almost tried my luck again with my new card can't stand the original fan noise..
But now reading your post and having same problems as rest of us i'm convinced that that this POS is purely designed.

We should get our money in full and paid for damage cards...
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I'm going to try RMAing my card; should that fail I will push for AC to pay for that. In the mean time, I will investigate getting AC to refund the shipping and costs for the cooler, as well as the shipping to return the sack of shit to them. Should they bulk at it, I'm going to file a complaint with the BBB and look into legal action...

I will point out: The original AMD cooler had plastic covering all areas that were not in contact with a chip that needed cooling...so I think AC missed that step, and shorted something.

In the mean time, I plan to hit up most tech forums I frequent and warn people about this POS, maybe try getting a hold of Kyle here as well to see if he can talk to AC...
 
Kyle, this would make a really good article to publish in the news.

This is something that needs to be put out there in the media to gain enough critical mass to attract the attention of Arctic Cooling properly.

This is completely unaccepatable that they are selling a product that damages videocards.

Guys, I would encourage you to make all your efforts to put this out there and make it known. Four people in this thread having their cards damaged because of this product cannot be a coincidence.
 
If nothing else, pool together like $20 each between the four of you to fund 'arcticcoolingkillscards.com.'

This shit is fucked up. So much for buying from them; their beefier solutions looked like good candidates for the GTX 400s.
 
after reading about the latest failures, i'm not going to risk my card. fwiw, i've tried emailing AC several times, and have tried to reach them via their support form. so far, i have not gotten any response at all from them. first email was sent to them last tuesday night.
 
YIKES!
I was gonna get one and mod it for my 5850 but to be honest....after reading all of this ( thanks for the link jkw) screw that.....ill use the stock reference cooler...

I had them on most all of my video cards....my 8800gt's my old ati x800 series

im really sorry to see all the problems they are causing you guys...
 
Matrices said:
If nothing else, pool together like $20 each between the four of you to fund 'arcticcoolingkillscards.com.'

This shit is fucked up. So much for buying from them; their beefier solutions looked like good candidates for the GTX 400s.
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Yes, I plan to at the very least post on forums; If buying a domain name would be of any use, then I can...I won't be taking any pictures though, as I have already mounted my old heatsink on the card...I'm going to RMA the card, but I think that this is just the case of them not properly testing. I'd also emailed them earlier this week and got no reply. I've lost all respect for them, and will never buy from them again.

For 5970 heatsinks, I already started another thread looking into the DD 5970 waterblock...and I'll admit I'm hesitant to try another aftermarket cooler, but I have some respect for DD...we'll see...
 
i probably should have remembered back to when i bought the AC xtreme cooler for my 4870x2. they shipped screws that were too short, and i somehow managed to get them in without killing the board. sending the wrong size screw for an item like this indicates very poor quality control and/or design. between these issues with their product design and QA, and their apparently non-existent support, they'll lose a few customers over this crap.
 
How the hell could this design pass their research and testing? Did they even try it on a 5970 before they mass produced it?
 
Kellygtp said:
YIKES!
I was gonna get one and mod it for my 5850 but to be honest....after reading all of this ( thanks for the link jkw) screw that.....ill use the stock reference cooler...

I had them on most all of my video cards....my 8800gt's my old ati x800 series

im really sorry to see all the problems they are causing you guys...
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Get the Twin Turbo Pro for the 5850. It's the best for that one actually as it uses the 5850 top plate so you don't even need to touch any components or do any VRM/RAM cooling.

You will need to cut off a little bit of the fins though since it bumps into the DVI port farraday cage.

There are zero reported problems with the Twin Turbo Pro with the 5850s and 5870s.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Get the Twin Turbo Pro for the 5850. It's the best for that one actually as it uses the 5850 top plate so you don't even need to touch any components or do any VRM/RAM cooling.

You will need to cut off a little bit of the fins though since it bumps into the DVI port farraday cage.

There are zero reported problems with the Twin Turbo Pro with the 5850s and 5870s.
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That may be true but why should anyone buy anything from this company?
 
GreenGoose said:
That may be true but why should anyone buy anything from this company?
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Because it works? Because there are few if any viable alternatives for custom air cooling that work as well? If a product works I will buy it because it is the best bang for my buck if I know that it is safe, not because I have some moral compass about who to support or not because every company makes bad products and makes mistakes. AC has a long track record of good products for many years. I've had them since the Ti4600. This is the first bad one that shows a serious problem with their designs and possibly customer support. Obviously if I had a 5970 I would stay the hell clear away from them and try to get the word out on the street to pressure them to reimburse customers, address the problem, and fix this. They have a responsibility to do that.
 
matrix563 said:
i've used arctic cooling on my vga cards in the past (x800xt i think). its a shame its causing issues now. i always thought that perhaps vga cards are becoming too complex to remove the stock cooler and replace with a third party one. far to easy to unknowingly damage the card. guess my hunch was right. i guess when i get my 5870 i'll just have to settle for the stock cooler ;).

thanks for this thread.
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Again, the problem is limited to 5970 coolers which I believe have a larger plate or parts that goes over the entire board and might be touching components they shouldn't.

The 5850/5870 coolers do not have this and work fine.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Again, the problem is limited to 5970 coolers which I believe have a larger plate or parts that goes over the entire board and might be touching components they shouldn't.

The 5850/5870 coolers do not have this and work fine.
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sorry but i never said it was all of their coolers. i said maybe the cards are getting too complex to switch out coolers on safely, which means only 5970. try again :p
 
Spare-Flair said:
Obviously if I had a 5970 I would stay the hell clear away from them and try to get the word out on the street to pressure them to reimburse customers, address the problem, and fix this. They have a responsibility to do that.
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Should AC provide us with new 5970s?
 
Spare-Flair said:
Because it works? Because there are few if any viable alternatives for custom air cooling that work as well? If a product works I will buy it because it is the best bang for my buck if I know that it is safe, not because I have some moral compass about who to support or not because every company makes bad products and makes mistakes. AC has a long track record of good products for many years. I've had them since the Ti4600. This is the first bad one that shows a serious problem with their designs and possibly customer support. Obviously if I had a 5970 I would stay the hell clear away from them and try to get the word out on the street to pressure them to reimburse customers, address the problem, and fix this. They have a responsibility to do that.
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the 4870x2 mounting screw fiasco was very widespread, and i think a few cards were bricked. the AC solution for that was pretty lame too ... they told people to go look for screws at their local hardware stores.

in general, if its just a fan that fails and causes your system to run a little hotter, then no big deal. when a part kills your $700 display adapter though, its a big deal. i expect a vendor to do a bit more testing and QA for a component that can do $700 of damage and cause a critical system failure.
 
Given how expensive these cards are, I would wager that they tested their design on maybe two of them before shipping the heatsinks out the door.
 
GreenGoose said:
Should AC provide us with new 5970s?
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in my opinion yes. it'll never happen though. i'm sure they'd rather just lose a couple hundred customers than spend $200,000 to replace cards and coolers for 200 people.
 
Matrices said:
Given how expensive these cards are, I would wager that they tested their design on maybe two of them before shipping the heatsinks out the door.
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or maybe they just let Sapphire do the QA work. is the Sapphire toxic card a reference design?
 
jkw said:
or maybe they just let Sapphire do the QA work. is the Sapphire toxic card a reference design?
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This is what I expect happened. There's probably a component on the toxic cards that is low profile that isn't on the reference board...hence why I wanted to know if people had reference boards...
 
GreenGoose said:
I agree. The Toxic is a different cooler. Similar but not the same as reference. And if it is the same, they really are stupid.
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Uh, AFAIK, you can just up the chip density to get more RAM...the pinouts are the same on the packages. As a result, they may have changed VRMs or other smaller components, and that's the point. If they did QA on the toxic card, they may have missed that they were either shorting somehting on the reference boards, or even crushing it.
 
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