Accelero Twin Turbo for 4870: My Review

[Polarman]

I wanted to share my experience by making a small review of this product:

Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo VGA cooler

I was quite happy when i saw the purolator truck stop in front of my house. Usually, i'm not home and i have to retreive any drop offs at their wherehouse wich i hate to go to. I wanted that cooler ever since it was announced. I immediately went to work! Here's a pic of the package.



We all know that the stock cooler does it's job as long as you "tweak" the fan settings to decrease those horrendous temperatures but at the expense of silence. More cooling = more noise. Anything above 50% fan speed begins to get very annoying. At 65% it sounds like a jet engine for me at least.

Accelero TWIN TURBO Main features

• Unmatched cooling performance – up to 120W
• Efficient heat transfer via 4 heatpipes and 30 fins
• Two ultra quiet 80mm fans with low noise impeller
• Patented fan holder eliminates the buzzing sound
• RAM and voltage regulator cooling
• SLi and Crossfire compatible
• Pre-applied MX-2
• Lightweight, transport safe
• 6 year warranty



If you want more details on this product, i suggest you visit their website:

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=166

The package included 8 RAMsink, 4 VRMsink, A pack of tiny screws and rings, A metal slot thingy, a 3 pin adapter to connect to the psu, the instructions and a nice sticker!

BEWARE! The instructions does not cover the 4850 / 4870. Check here for how to.



The fan has both 3 pins and 4 pins. The 4 pins can connect directly to the card so you can adjust the fan settings if need be.



Here's a shot of my Visiontek HD4870 with the stock cooler and one without it.





I used a cleaning solution made by 3M to clean the GPU, the Memory and the VRM to make sure that the small aluminum sink "stick" well. I hate to put these on. I usually put them on crooked.





After everything was cleaned up, i took the small stickers off the back of the sinks to stick them where there suppose to go but what's this...

The lowest RAMsink touches the heatpipe. Time to get creative!



I had to be creative too with the VRMsinks (cut) to make them fit nicely and put the remaining elsewhere. Here's the results.



Now it's time to put the heatsink on. Fortunatly there a sitcky part on under the sink to hold those small stupid o-rings (spacers). The screws are tiny, so i make sure not to overtighten them. I was a bit of a pain but i managed to complete the installation without screwing things up. Voila! The new 4870.



A word of warning to those who uses crossfire. I'm not sure, but i think that it will interfere with CF bridges. Once the cooler is installed, It will take 3 slot. I'm not kidding. Have a look:



This is what it looked like when i put it back into my case.



Now for the testing. I do not have screenies or picture anymore. My super duper testing was the following:

Check idle temp with GPU-Z, Run 3Dmark06 "Firefly" test loop 6 time in a row and re-checked load temp. Not the best, but it will do.

STOCK FAN running 35% (2400RPM) 51 IDLE / 63 LOAD Not too bad! Btw, I had AS-5 on stock cooler to help.

Twin Turbo running 75% (1800RPM) 43 IDLE / 47 LOAD WOW!

I'm still using the CCC fan "tweak" trick. but WOW!!! The RPM is much lower then other one. That's a 33% difference! The cooler is super quiet. I tried setting the fan at 35% but the RPM speed in GPU-Z was really messed up and i had similar stock temps at that speed, too low i guess. Remember that the thermal paste has not truly set yet. So temps should improve with time. Overall, I'm really impressed with the Accelero Twin Turbo. For a single card user like me. It's pretty "Cool".

PRO's:

Great cooling
Low noise
Lots of heatsinks
3 pins + 4 pins to connect directly to the card.
6 year Warrenty

CON's:

Uses 3 slots
May interfere with CF bridges
4870 requires twinking.

I'll leave the scoring stuff to the real review guys.

[oli_ramsay]

Nice review

[DonInKansas]

Looks like a winner for them toasty 48-- cards. Nice!

[dng29]

thanks for this thread as this will make my purchase that much easier. i will probably order one for my 4850. how's the installation? i don't see the 4850 or 4870 listed on the installation manual. i have two 4850s and will have to use a different heatsink on the other 4850 for crossfire. now to find a cheaper deal on this nice cooler.

[Lionheart]

good review, nice cooler too man, wish i had that for my hd4850, anyways enjoy

[tigger]

I got my accelero s1 the other day,on my 4850 my idle temp is 31c with ie running and max is about 45c now.It has a thermaltake 12cm fan on it.

AC make awesome coolers be it cpu or gpu ones.If you compare the cooling performance of AC coolers compared to others for the price they are unbeatable.

That is a nice cooler,it looks kinda like a s1 but a bit smaller.The pipe layout is nearly the same.

[Polarman]

I made a link to the instructions for the 4850 / 4870 on their website following the Beware notice.

[lucasweir]

i just ordered one of these for my 4850 hopefully it will help my overclocking on this???

mine runs at 70C stock which is way to hot and can get up to 90 while under load

[sno.lcn]

Thanks for the review. I hate you, now I have to order one (or beg the nice folks at Arctic Cooling for a review sample). It looks like a chopped down Accelero S1 with a fan assembly added though. Although you mentioned it takes up 3 slots, it looks like it would save some room over the S1 in my case, because I strap a 120mm fan to mine

[Fastmix]

Good review.

[dng29]

i voided all possible warranty on my sapphire 4850 because i cut up the heatsink to make some modifications. lets just say that i re-enforce the heatsink on the memory chips and use the copper heatsink(reference heatsink) to cool the pwm. overall the twin turbo rocks, but if you have crossfire, you'll have to put it on the second card. there's no way you can put it on the first card. now i need another heatsink to cool the first card. i wish i took some pictures. just to paint a little picture, the first card with ref heatsink is idling around 50+ degree. the second card with the twin turbo idles around 44 degree. on a cool day, the second card will be even cooler. i would definitely recommend the twin turbo as it's a budget card from this online vendor, aero cooler something.

[red268]

Nice one. This'll be helpful for lots of people.

[pomeroyi]

I believe an aftermarket cooler on the 4850 is almost essential, mine is the Asus reference.

I was running Crysis on high, which the game recommended, and was getting aweful stuttering in game play, sometimes freezing for seconds at a time.

I installed an Akasa Vortexx Neo (mainly cos the Accelero S1 seems to be out of stock across the UK) and saw temps come down from 58/78 (and loud) to 35/54 (v quiet), and DX10 games are now fully playable. I believe the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 will better those temps easily.

I assume the high temp was causing the RAM freeze I have read about elsewhere.

Take a look at the Coolink GFXChilla also.

[soldar]

hey, can you post a screenshot of the latest Gpu-z on load\idle? i have an HR-03gt cooler on my hd4870 and as u can see my vddc are dying(or probably already dead, since i seem to be having some graphics issue in some games), i want to know if the AC cooler fixes this because of the two fans(apparently the thermalright t-rad is supposed to fix it too but that's not available anywhere here).
though seeing your 63c load temp with stock, i might just ask the shop to return to stock cooling with a proper thermal compound and save some money since that's not a bad temp
the load is from crysis: warhead if you're interested ^^ the most demanding game right now pretty much

[honestjohn_]

Two thumbs up Polar. It always helps to have pics and some helpful hints. Especially when the documentation is lacking.

[LuxZg]

I second the soldar's request.. VRM temperatures under load during gaming (prefferably Crysis or similar "heavy" game) would be real nice, so we know if that part of cooling was solved as well..

VRMs actually give everyone more problems than GPU core

[tkpenalty]

looks like its just an acceleroS1 that got cut down, but with fans installed

(actually that gives me a reason not to buy it...)

[OnBoard]

Originally Posted by tkpenalty

looks like its just an acceleroS1 that got cut down, but with fans installed

(actually that gives me a reason not to buy it...)

Well it is a Accelero S1 + turbo module fused together on a diet and they aren't even trying to hide it. S1 is the passive / DIY version. When S1 came out I didn't like that it was so high and it doesn't fit every case. This one does, looks better while doing it and is PWM power by the card.

TwinTurbo looks sexy stripped (from http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=773)


Just don't know if S1 + 120mm fan is more than 3 slots, don't want to block my other PCI-E 16x slot, even though it's not in use. I do like PWM fans and the looks of TwinTurbo more and it's under 3 slots and the couple fins less isn't bad.

Oh and late thanks for the review. Nowhere are pics of the VRMsinks that are included, not even on that legionhardware review. Those same four sinks should be also on the new versions of Accelero S1s (made after MAY 2008), but again nowhere are pics.

[Aircraft123]

I bought an Accelero TT for my 4870. In an Aerocool AeroEngine Plus

It runs wonderfully with only 1 card in:

~45 degrees C Idle

55 - 60 Degrees C Load

50% fan

now when I install a second card there is only 1 or 2 cm between fan modules and the second card. This causes cooling performance to deteriorate rapidly

Temps reached 80 degrees C on the top card with the TT and a 120mm fan blowing on it
with moderate load.

With the card in the bottom slot it's a different story - 50 degrees C idle

60 - 65 degrees C moderate load in Crossfire

SO at this point I'm going to put the TT in the bottom of the case and have my other 4870 using stock cooling for now.

Anyone tried the Thermaltake Duorb on a 4870???

the biggest problem seems to be air flow - TT can't get enough cool air when its in the top slot so it just keeps getting hotter.

In the bottom it's getting cool air from the bottom of the case.

again it is wonderfull as long as u use 1 card or have it in the bottom of the case.