text:
Arctic Cooling Accelero Hybrid VGA Cooler Review: Not For the Faint of Heartby Dustin Sklavos on 12/28/2012 8:15 PM EST
- Posted in
- graphics
- cooling
- Arctic Cooling
47 Comments
Back to Article
EzioAs - Friday, December 28, 2012 - linkI've seen this cooler being tested before on the HD7970, though I don't remember which site it was but they posted an almost equal result to what you just did. I remember that the temps were very low and noise is almost no concern either because it's so low even when they compared it to the MSI Twin Frozr card (I think it was the 7970 lightning). This review just backup their claim.
Thanks for the nice review Dustin. Reply
Wwhat - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkAn interesting remark since the arctic cooling site lists this as being compatible with the 78xx series and NOT with the 79xx series.
So are you sure what you saw was about a 7970 and not a 78xx? Reply
Dustin Sklavos - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkThere's a separate 7970 version. Reply
JebbyC - Friday, December 28, 2012 - linkHow would a pair of these go in SLI? Could you fit them into two slots, possibly by removing part of the fan shroud? Reply
Flunk - Friday, December 28, 2012 - linkGet a board with 2 slots in between the 16x slots, there are a lot of options. Reply
JacobCody - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkLove my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online(Click on menu Home)
http://goo.gl/uvsGa Reply
Beenthere - Friday, December 28, 2012 - linkUnless people have a real space limitation, I strongly recommend against using liquid cooling systems for a CPU/GPU unless your intent is to be a hobbyist playing with these cooling systems, which is pretty much impossible with a CLC. If that's the plan then buy a real H2O based open loop cooling system which can deliver better cooling than a highend HSF. They start at $175. and go up. They can be entertaining for a hobbyist even if not a good value. Test after tests has shown that CLCs do not cool as well as a highend HSF, they cost more than a highend HSF and they are noisier than a highend HSF.
The worst problem however with CLCs is that they not only can leak and cause expensive PC hardware damage, lost data, RMA's, etc. the fact is they DO leak and cause the aforementioned problems. See the Corsair H2O web forums for real tales of horror. It's wise to educate yourself before getting duped into using an inferior CLC cooling system for your PC. If you still want to jump into the water, go right ahead, it's your dime, your time and your arse when the CLC leaks, is noisy or does a poor job of cooling.
You've been warned so you have no excused for being duped by misleading CLC hype. Technically challenged folks who fail to do their homework often perceive CLCs to be superior because they use water to transport the heat to a radiator. Unfortunately CLCs are not superior in any way other than a smaller footprint if your PC case will not allow a quality highend HSF. If that's the situation you'd be smarter to buy a larger PC case, not a CLC.
There are plenty of quality HSF reviews to scientifically document that CLCs are inferior in every metric that enthusiasts typically use to determine what CPU/GPU cooling system to purchase. Let the accurate, objective science be your guide not misleading claims. Always remember that CLCs can and do leak and damage PC hardware. HSFs do not leak water and they outperform CLCs. Reply
bigboxes - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkSo, would this help downloading torrents from the internets? Reply
Mygaffer - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkYou are such a sad sack. Reply
Notmyusualid - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link+1 Reply
halo37253 - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkYeah right, No one wants a big HSF in their PC. CLC's don't leak, if your one of the vary few I feel bad for ya. Compared to HSF CLCs are quiet and take up vary little space. They tend to Overclock just as good as the best HSFs as well. I personally would just get a rasa kit for cheap if I was going to get into water cooling, as water cooling is dead easy to do try it and you'll see for your self.
For overclocking a GPU nothing can touch water cooling, I have my GTX470's under water and they scream. Though under air even at only 800mhz they would get into the 90-104c while gaming. Water is just the way to go if you want a quiet PC while pushing the overclocks on everything in your system. I'm done hearing fan noise, and sadly Air cooling isn't able to keep noise down while overclocking so... Reply
randomly - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - linkI've watercooled a lot of PC's in my day and the substantial advantages in noise and cooling that water cooling once had have eroded a great deal. Modern high end heat pipe heatsinks do very well and the hassles and headaches of water cooling and the minimal improvements are just not worth the trouble of water cooling anymore. Any flexible tubing is going to slowly lose coolant because plastics and rubbers are porous, even if you don't have a catastrophic leak you still have the maintenance problems. Leaking pumps, failing pumps, leaking connections, leaking resevoirs, system running out of coolant through porosity losses in tubing, dead gpu cards while installing waterblocks etc. I've seen it all. After a dozen years with water cooling I can't see myself going back to it with the current air cooling options.
Last upgrade I just used a Silverstone HE01 Heligon heatsink for the cpu, and an ASUS GTX680 triple slot vid card. The whole system is quieter than the previous water cooled setup, with no hassles, no leaks to worry about and no risk in killing my gpu installing a water cooling setup (done that before too). Everything is overclocked, the i7-3570k at 4300mhz, the GTX680 at 1230mhz and the system is barely audible even with heavy gaming. You might get a slight bump in overclocking potential with water cooling, but it'll be so small you won't be able to notice a difference is the machine. Reply
Kidster3001 - Thursday, January 03, 2013 - linkAgreed. My first water cooling setup was in 2004 on Prescott. It needed it though :-) Bought everything from Dangerden.com and spent well over $500 for everything.
I kept that case and setup alive for several years. The CPU, Northbridge and GPU were all cooled by it through a few rebuilds. When I upgraded to Conroe X6800 I moved to a new case and went back to air cooling. Other than the first month or so playing with a new rig, pushing OC to the limits, the water cooling wasn't really needed for 24x7 operation at high component speeds and low fan noise.
Once in a while I miss being able to run at 5+ GHz when I want to but it's not worth my time or the cost just for a few days a year of fun. Reply
Flunk - Friday, December 28, 2012 - linkIt seems like most users would be better served by one of Arctic's air coolers like the Extreme series or Twin Turbo 2 (I have 2 of these in my system). They're a lot cheaper, provide more than adequate cooling for huge GPU overclocks and if someone is hardcore enough to want more then custom watercooling makes a lot more sense. Reply
kmmatney - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkI'm wondering if the ability to overclock higher was mainly due to better VRM cooling, which is air cooled in the review.
My experience with Arctic's air coolers has been great. I had a HD4890 that was unbearably loud with the stock cooler. Using an AC Accelero Rev 2 made it virtually silent (just a 5V quiet fan on the heatsink), cooler, and allowed me to overclock higher. For me, the key was keeping the VRMs cool, and I ended up buying a $10 Zalman VRM cooler which made all the difference. So I'm not sure the GPU cooling was waht allowed the card to overclock higher - I think it may be the better VRM cooling. Reply
Dustin Sklavos - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkThe thought had occurred to me as well, but either way, the GTX 680 was able to get a bit more headroom. Reply
JlHADJOE - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - linkI'm guessing a combination of both.
The GK104s throttle down their clocks after hitting certain thermal thresholds, the first of which is at 70C. So even with VRM cooling in place, if thecard hits 70C then it wouldn't have clocked as high as it did with the liquid cooler. Reply
londiste - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - linkthere is a very simple difference between hybrid and extreme/twinturbo coolers. with hybrid it is very simple to get the heat out of the case (even compared to reference cooler), with extreme/twinturbo... not so much.
not everyone is boasting a case with 5+ to keep the air moving quickly in and out at all times. Reply
scaramoosh - Friday, December 28, 2012 - linkIt looks stupid and with an SLI system you're gonna be struggling.
These companies need to make an all in one modable system for noobs who don't want to invest time in to learning what parts they need to buy. I think that is the main problem to why people don't invest in water cooling, like where do you start? They buy this stuff just because it is easy. Reply
CK804 - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkwww.koolance.com Reply
boyang1724 - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkThis is quite pathetic actually. Just get an Antec 620/ Corsair H60 cooler and a bracket from dwood for any high end gpu. Also comes with a fan mount, and only costs around $70-80 total. Brought my GTX 670 down from 80C+ max to 55C, and idle from 38C to 25C. It's a much better deal than this thing. Reply
SodaAnt - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkI'll second this. You get just as much performance for only around $60 (in my case). Plus it actually seems easier to install than this thing. Reply
BrightCandle - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkA custom water loop specified at 10C delta can produce temperatures around +20C delta at peak load. So these figures are certainly pretty decent comparatively. This goes a long way towards custom loop performance for less cost. Its about the same amount of pain in terms of modifying the GPU for watercooling however, just without the pain of cutting the tubing, fitting larger radiators and other water cooling pain.
Your methodology doesn't mention your soak time for the water loop. Due to the heat capacity of water you do need to run at peak load for 30 minutes. So it might not be quite as impressive as it first appears. Reply
mayankleoboy1 - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - link"Your methodology doesn't mention your soak time for the water loop. Due to the heat capacity of water you do need to run at peak load for 30 minutes. So it might not be quite as impressive as it first appears. "
Unless you allow the water temperature to stabilise for some time (1 hour ?) , these results are erroneous. Reply
Death666Angel - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - linkI get ~20K delta between ambient and GPU with my WC rig (4x120mm radiator mounted to the side of the case). It cost me 382.52€, 117.74€ for monitoring and control equipment and 51.56€ for the 4 fans, the rest for the WC stuff (pump, connectors, radiator, tubes...). But I also cool my CPU (which achieved 500MHz higher OC compared to my air cooler (Noctua NH-C12P)) and the system is not audible for me. The GPU was bought used with the WC mounted already and cost as much a new retail, so I got the cooler for free. I can use this equipment for the next CPU, mainboard, GPU upgrade. I can reinstall the stock air cooler on the GPU easily. I can add other components to the loop.
I just don't see how these CLCs are seen as competing with custom WC rigs. Yes, they are a bit more expensive, but they also deliver many more options. CLC for CPUs does at least offer a few extra things (better clearance around the socket, extra fan controls...) but I doubt this offers that much more compared to after market GPU air coolers. Reply
ziv_ew - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkhow dose it compare to the eVGA 680 Hydro Cooper? Reply
IanCutress - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkMakes me think of the total cost of a pair of MSI Lightnings or ASUS CUII TOPs with these coolers. In simulations the GPU gets hammered extensively over days, and the cooler the whole system the better. Reply
dannoddd - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkI'd really like to see this put up against one of the DWOOD systems, where you take your choice of ALC mixed with his $8 bracket and put it on any card. I've been concerned about doing it due to the lack of VRM/RAM heatsinks. I think it'd be great if you could grab one of those and bench it against this setup and compare the difficulty of installation.
Great article Dustin, love your work. Reply
DanNeely - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkAs fiddly as this is I suspect that if you've got a supported card a custom loop and a full cover heatsink would be less work to assemble than gluing all the individual ram/vrm sinks in place. Unfortunately they still don't have nVidia 6xx parts available yet.
http://www.swiftech.com/graphics.aspx Reply
Shiitaki - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkRather ironic, I had commented in the last water cooling article that the gpu is the one that needs water cooling, not so much the cpu. Why is the radiator mounted to the video card? That's the only reason it's so expensive, and it's silly given how many fan mounts come in cases these days. Reply
DanNeely - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkThey didn't. You did by not reading much of the article before snarking. Look at the second picture on page 2 of the article. The radiator is detached and can go in any standard 120mm fan mount; the shroud attached to the card is to direct air onto the heatsinks covering the ram and VRM chips. Reply
funguseater - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkAbsolute garbage.
Been using a $49 Antec Kuhler 620 on my GTX480's overclocked to 850MHz core and they NEVER break 73 degrees. Bought a $8 custom fan bracket for mine but first just used zip-ties, and this is a GTX480 the Hottest girl on the block. This thing is so overpriced it is ridiculous. Wish I had access to an accelero to compare system cooling results but the cheapo kuhler 620 will fit any GPU cooling need. Reply
AnnihilatorX - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkI wish GPU vendors offer more GPUs with waterblocks on them pre-built. Sometimes one or two vendors offer them but usually at a premium more expensive than buying a VGA card with standard cooler and the waterblock separately, which doesn't make much sense given the GPU doesn't need a standard cooler and sink anymore.
I hate GPU fan noise and I hate thorttling, although I don't OC much I found watercooling is worth it. However last time I was careless with the VRM cooling on the HD6950, the VRM size is so small and hard to cool without specially made waterblock. I went DIY route and got the card burnt out, $400 down the drain for me lol Reply
funguseater - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkYeah, thats why when I use a sealed CPU unit like the H70 or Kuhler 620 I just leave the stock blower fan and heatsink on, you can just leave the fan at a solid 40% and never hear it, and it cools your VRM just as well as stock. The CPU cooler just bolts ontop of the card all you do is remove the "heatpipe section" and replace with the sealed cooler, whamo 30degree drop under load. YMMV, laser cut steel adapters with fan mounts can be found online if you don't use a reference model GPU. Reply
CaedenV - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkI put an AC cooler on my old 9800GT back in the day. It went from sounding like a vacuum cleaner with the stock cooler, to dead silent with a passive radiator, while keeping the load temp 15*c cooler. It was unbelievable.
Only problem was that they used cheap thermal tape to keep the ram heat-sinks attached, and every once in a while one would fall off, causing really annoying problems until I would reattach it. A few months later another would fall off, etc etc, and it was that way until I finally upgraded. But other than that it was perfect. Reply
jonjonjonj - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - linkAt that price it's not worth it. Especially when you add a h100 your looking at $300. You could build a custom loop for the price of just the article cooler. Add that it's not a simple bolt on like the CPU version and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It actually just looks like they took the CPU version and strapped it into a plastic gpu case. I think they need to go back to the drawing boards and design the gpu cooler from the ground up. Not just slap the CPU cooler on a gpu. Reply
TekDemon - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - linkBuying one of these is rather pointless unless you're going to overvolt the GPU...
So...anandtech...where's my sweet overvolted charts? =p Reply
mi1stormilst - Wednesday, January 02, 2013 - linkget a higher end card than the one you planned on getting and avoid all this headache from the get go ;-P Reply
woogitboogity - Wednesday, January 02, 2013 - link"Not for the faint of heart" kind of says it all. I was burned BAD by liquid cooling 4 years ago and to be fair I did bring it on myself given the circumstances. Back then there were a few companies exploring a middle ground beyond the "old car radiator" DIY types with actual purpose built components that were supposed to fit together based on pre-existing on water hoses used in labs. Still despite how much it cost me in the end, I will not deny that having my North Bridge, CPU and Graphics Hardware running a few degrees over ambient at full load was downright intoxicating for as long as it ran. It then made a mockery of what I thought was a reasonably watertight seal. The fact that what they sell now are all closed loop cycles with pump and heat sink already integral parts out of the box is absolutely no surprise to me and I expect it to stay that way for good reason. Also, when you start doing funny stuff with memory heat sinks you sometimes have to add clear paste to protect the contacts on the board from weird impedance changing effects from the thermal conductive paste and the copper block itself. I wonder whether this was also a factor as well in bricking half the hardware I had installed on my ill-fated PC.
If you have money to burn, or to be more accurate, money to replace what is burned out, then go for it. But make no mistake that you are as off-warranty as off-warranty gets. I know the product offerings are safer and have come a long way but newer electronics that are 10 times as fast can be a 1000 times more delicate. For myself, I work with fairly advanced electronics in high energy physics, so I do not say it lightly that I will not touch the innards on anything from a nice Workstation/Desktop. Not unless it is already broken, for the purposes of seeing if I can fix it to beef up a machine I don't care that much about.
Nice article though, despite the difficult memories it brought up of finding a water puddle in my case. :-) Reply
stoatwblr - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - linkMoisture detectors are fairly readily available and can be rigged to cut the power.
(contaminated) Water on unenergised circuitry is fairly benign. Just wash it off. Reply
nosaj999 - Thursday, January 03, 2013 - linkConveniently NewEgg has put this beasty on sale!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... Reply
xcomvic - Thursday, January 03, 2013 - linkGet it while it's hot! Please update the article with new price at the end. This will definitely make it a stronger case for an award don't you think? Reply
qepsilonp - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - linkI would consider buying it if it wasn't stuck on that GPU so I could maybe use it on my next GPU given that I personally couldn't justify the price. Reply
dllyncher - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - linkI just installed this cooler on my EVGA GTX 660ti Signature2 FTW and my temps are kind of confusing. Idle temps are around 24C which is the same as the stock cooler. The unusual part is that while running EVGA OC Scanner for 10 minutes, temps reach 45C versus 39C with the stock cooler. I know I have installed it properly as I've checked many times. If anyone is having the same problems please let me know so I know it's not just me. Reply
Maleorderbride - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - linkMy Titan was only running at ~68% of TDP at 88F ambient (hot, I know) and this thing cooled the VRMs enough that I am now at 93.4% TDP at the same ambient.
Installation was a needless trial, but put a movie on and take your time. Reply
theNiZer - Saturday, December 07, 2013 - linkI really like this unit - much more than the now popular Kraken G10, because you can fit Accelero Hybrid in a mini itx case!
And of course, being able to 'pump' the how gpu air out of the mini itx case is important to avoid gpu throttling and maximize efficiency.
Combine this with coolermaster Elite 130, nice! Reply
editorsorgtfo - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - linkThe best HSFs are spiffy coolers, but there are drawbacks to using the most efficient ones. The impressively-high-performing, dual-tower/dual-fan Noctua NH-D15 exemplifies them: first, it stands quite tall, at 16.5 cm, and can present a space problem in less than capacious cases. It is wide, and can preclude the use of RAM with any but the most modest heat spreaders, since memory stick height is limited to 32 mm. It is also massive, weighing in at 1.32 kilos -- almost 3 pounds! -- and has a high center of gravity, due to its stature. The effect of that much leverage on a vertically-mounted motherboard, if jostled, can easily be total destruction, with the processor, socket and rear mount being ripped right out! Even the static torque of the NH-D15, over time, could lead to mobo failure, which may not be covered by warranty.
None of those issues exist where using a CLC, even one with integrated waterblock and pump: Silverstone's brazed, screwless waterblock eliminates a major point of leakage; Antec's Kühler further reduces obtrusiveness and physical stress on the motherboard by moving the pump(s) off-block to the fan axles.
Rig damage by cooler sux, whether it's the result of fluid leakage from an AIO or excessive weight of a HSF pulling a board apart. Maybe a bungee counterbalancing a massive HSF would quietly help alleviate gravitational torqueing of the motherboard; if you install a CLC, inspect it often for signs of loss of seal integrity and leakage. "To be forewarned is to be forearmed."
Each type of cooling systen has its strong points, yet comes up short in others. Given a bit more development time, CLCs will become more refined, and their problems largely ironed out. Reply