Sparkle X580 (GTX 580 with Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme)

B

Boyiee

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 20, 2010
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250
I'm upgrading my 480 to one or 2 580's and while browsing newegg, I saw:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187127&cm_re=gtx_580-_-14-187-127-_-Product

Can anyone comment on this? I was originally going to grab one of these coolers or a VF3000F for my 480 but have decided on just going with a 580 instead. Noise is a big issue to me, I hate the sound of my 480, but I know the 580 fan sounds different as well as runs quieter and at lower rpm's.

Worth getting one of these at all? Or just sticking with the MSI since the card is already pretty cool and quiet at stock.
 
I don't like Sparkle personally but I LOVE the AC AXP (sig). Fantastic and essential product for the 480 and makes a great difference with other cards too and it's very quiet, about the same level of noise as the Gigabyte GTX 460 1gb (quiet twin fans) or most 120mm case fans. At load it is quieter than the AC Freezer 7 Pro by a good margin.
 
Saw this card yesterday in newegg, decided to look into it, there is really one company that has reviewed it so far.
http://www.hardwarezone.com/product-guide/view/98276/review/102468
Only thing is since they thermally improved the 580 it makes it less impressive than if the card ran as hot as the old 480. New fans only help it about 11c and for the most part o/c outta the box it only does 1-3% yields, if you o/c and disable the auto throttle feature you can push for %10 yields, this is all I got from the article.

My opinion on it is mixed since I was expecting it do run a lot faster based on those bench, the premium is not bad since its a $40-50 over the o/c cards, and it actually comes with a solution to help keep it cool for those that wanna push the card harder instead of just some higher clocks, also it comes with a limited lifetime warranty.

Is it worth it? depends on you, if you plan to SLI cards or ever go multi monitor this might not be the solution for you since it takes 3 slots instead of 2, this associates having a better motherboard with more pci slots or better spacing, a case to fit it in, and a bigger psu. So this card is not the best if you even remotely thing about sli.
Also consider this card will blow hot air inside the case so you need a decent ventilation system whereas the stock 580 blows the heat out.
Money wise this card is a lot of capital, specially when the amd 6970 is so close to launch. I am tempted to see how it goes, but I am on vacation and would like to enjoy a new card now rather than later. I too I am tempted by this, almost got the 480 version of this card, but when I finally got the money for one the card was not available anymore.
 
For noise the AXP coolers are whisper silent even on full blast and will be drowned out by even the quietest case fans. The cooling improvement isn't as massive due to the 580's improved design but it will certainly be much quieter. I love mine, but the 3 slot design does limit expandability. Hopefully this combined with the info given above is enough info to help you weigh the pro's and cons against your personal wishlist for card performance.
 
If I hadn't bought a 580 already, I'd probably order one of those, just because I've been adding 3rd party coolers on my cards lately. I had a AC twin turbo on my 5870, dropped the load temp by around 15 degrees.

I was tempted to do the same for my 580, but I'm also liking that I'm not hogging 3 slots now with the stock fan, and the stock cooler on the 580 ain't too bad. I'd expect the 10 degrees difference in what that Sparkle showed, but I have a feeling I may just skip 3rd party this time. I got a high flow bracket from EVGA and I'm gonna put that on and re-TIM the stock cooler to see what that gets me, hopefully just the low 80s under load.
 
i installed a pretty much same cooler on my gtx480, it lowered the tempature by 30c at full load.

they are awesome aftermarket coolers.
 
I should of waited for one of these. :(

EDIT: The review didn't even talk about the noise.
 
Triple slots means that X58 owners will be almost the only ones able to use this if you want SLI.
 
I'm only running 2x 1900x1200 monitors right now and I wasn't planning on SLI'ing any time soon, so the size isn't too much of a concern.

My gripe as I said is with sound, I know the 580 is quieter than the 480 at stock, but this makes it even quieter. I was looking at this cooler for my 480, but said screw it and started looking at 580's. I really hate changing coolers on gpu's, and this is a decent price for it being done out of the box. I will have to reverse the direction of the fans on my H70 though to be intakes if I were to pick this up lol.
 
Boyiee said:
I'm only running 2x 1900x1200 monitors right now and I wasn't planning on SLI'ing any time soon, so the size isn't too much of a concern.

My gripe as I said is with sound, I know the 580 is quieter than the 480 at stock, but this makes it even quieter. I was looking at this cooler for my 480, but said screw it and started looking at 580's. I really hate changing coolers on gpu's, and this is a decent price for it being done out of the box. I will have to reverse the direction of the fans on my H70 though to be intakes if I were to pick this up lol.
Click to expand...

Why is that? My H70 is exhausting right now.
 
bitgod said:
If I hadn't bought a 580 already, I'd probably order one of those, just because I've been adding 3rd party coolers on my cards lately. I had a AC twin turbo on my 5870, dropped the load temp by around 15 degrees.

I was tempted to do the same for my 580, but I'm also liking that I'm not hogging 3 slots now with the stock fan, and the stock cooler on the 580 ain't too bad. I'd expect the 10 degrees difference in what that Sparkle showed, but I have a feeling I may just skip 3rd party this time. I got a high flow bracket from EVGA and I'm gonna put that on and re-TIM the stock cooler to see what that gets me, hopefully just the low 80s under load.
Click to expand...
I hadn't heard of the high flow brackets, just looked it up on EVGA's website and $10 seems pretty steep for what you're getting.

Still, I'd like to see what improvement that would make over the exhaust holes on my 470 which are shaped as 'm' 's' and 'i'. I'm going to look through my old card collection to see if I have a dual dvi single slot bracket that would fit, then it would be no obstructions at all.
 
fullvietFX said:
Why is that? My H70 is exhausting right now.
Click to expand...

Mine is too right now, but the arctic cooler on the 480/580 dumps heat into the case, instead of outside it like the reference coolers. So if I were to use that cooler on the 580, I'd have a lot of hot air running through my cpu rad. The reason it's better to be an exhaust right now, is because if it were intake, it would be sucking in some of the hot air from the reference gpu cooler.
 
And its sold out. Looks like a nice card. Wonder if the dumping heat into the case negates to the other hardware.
 
ellover009 said:
And its sold out. Looks like a nice card. Wonder if the dumping heat into the case negates to the other hardware.
Click to expand...

I haven't noticed an impact.

It is however important it has some airflow around it to keep it from recirculating its own heated air and making a heat pocket. Case in point, I just got a 470 and moved my 280 to the secondary spot. In my V1000B, this is up at the top of the case in the infamous domed heat pocket where the fan airflow can't really move anything. This has caused my doling temp to go from 60C to 70C which while still good is a significant increase.

I think of it more as making your GPU adhere to the principals we associate with CPU HSF's as apposed to GPU blowers.
 
Yeah it sold out shortly after putting the link up here! What a mistake! lol

Oh well, my 480 just got a couple bids on Ebay, guess I'll order the MSI flavor of the 580 now. Probably better in case I want to add a 2nd or 3rd one so I'll have more slots. Although maybe I should wait till tuesday for the 570, would be much easier for me to SLI those.
 
R-Type said:
I hadn't heard of the high flow brackets, just looked it up on EVGA's website and $10 seems pretty steep for what you're getting.

Still, I'd like to see what improvement that would make over the exhaust holes on my 470 which are shaped as 'm' 's' and 'i'. I'm going to look through my old card collection to see if I have a dual dvi single slot bracket that would fit, then it would be no obstructions at all.
Click to expand...

Someone did at XS when they were first offered, the difference in the resulting temperatures was negligible/margin-of-error.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Someone did at XS when they were first offered, the difference in the resulting temperatures was negligible/margin-of-error.
Click to expand...

I'm going to put it under water when SB launches so I will deal with its 90C load temps until then, it seems they have been surviving that just fine.
 
I too researched hi-flow brackets but all research and engineering common sense leads me to the conclusion that they are a gimmick.
 
I have a feeling re-TIMing will be almost all of any gain, but since I have to take it apart, I decided I'd give the high flow bracket for the hell of it. Hopefully I'll get to it on thursday, got my IC Diamond sample from Falcon on the EVGA board on Saturday, so I'll load the card up for a while for the before temp and then test with the ICD and high flow.

I'm surprised the pricing on these 3rd party fans are so out of control. Just comparing the price on the AC Twin Turbo, I found my receipt from last year and paid $32 at ++++, today at ++++ it's $48, sheesh.
 
I gave up waiting for this beast to become in stock. I might have a better chance at finding an unicorn like the ones they have in the box than finding the card in stock. From what I've seen they only sold em In newegg. Feels like they use these as a publicity stunt to get the sparkle name out there and sell a few of those just to get people talking. I also noticed they have their forum amd most support locked away unless you register with them.
So I went with a nice evga 580 so I can at least enjoy some of what's left in my vacation before I have to return back to work.
 
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