Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus GPU Cooler

Accelero Xtreme Plus is an unapologetic three-fan monster GPU cooler that Arctic Cooling claims can tackle cards drawing up to 250W. It may be the VGA heatsink noise-adverse gaming enthusiasts have been waiting for.

November 4, 2010 by Lawrence Lee

The high-end GPUs of today are extremely power hungry, with some models gobbling up more than 200W on their own. Their complexity and energy draw has increased faster than CPUs in recent years resulting in a paradigm shift when it comes to quiet computing. In a serious gaming rig, the stock cooler on the video card or cards, not the processor, is typically the loudest component. The position of the graphics chip in a standard ATX tower makes it extremely difficult to cool efficiently and modern stock solutions only do so with high noise levels.

Of course the simplest way to deal with all that extra heat is to just make a larger heatsink, and that’s exactly what Arctic Cooling has done. Makers of iconic VGA coolers like the VGA Silencer and Accelero S1, their latest model is an unapologetic, monstrous cooler with three 92 mm fans, the Accelero Xtreme Plus.

To those of you screaming ‘overkill!’ at your screen, keep in mind the best dual fan cooler we’ve tested, the GELID Icy Vision, cooled down our Radeon HD 4890 fairly well, but by our estimates, it’s only a 150W card. For cards with power draws in the 200W range, it might not be that effective, particularly if the fan speeds are turned down to keep the system quiet. It will be interesting to see how how much better the Accelero Xtreme Plus is at cooling an Overclocked HIS Radeon HD 5870, which by our estimates can pull 215W on full load.

The Xtreme Plus ships with a 7V/12V molex fan adapter, screws and washers, and a PCI bracket vent for the slot below the card after it has been installed. Eight ramsinks, four sets of four different sized VRM heatsinks, and a small tube of thermal adhesive came in a separate accessory package.

Arctic Cooling offers different sets of memory, VRM heatsinks, and mounting plates for different cards (listed above) rather than including them all in one package for universal compatibility. They offer a couple of pre-bundled versions, the Xtreme 5870 with VR001, the set with the highest compatibility, and the Xtreme GTX Pro with VR002 for the GTX 260/275/280/285. They also sell an Xtreme 5970, a larger version that can handle the Radeon HD 5970’s dual GPUs.

PHYSICAL DETAILS

The Accelero Xtreme Plus consists of a copper base, five extremely long heatpipes running down the entire length of the heatsink, 84 aluminum fins, and three 92 mm fans. It is 29 cm (11.4″) long and weighs in at approximately 650 grams according to our digital scale, a bit more than the specified 622 grams.

INSTALLATION

The most critical aspect of installation is for the heatsink to be securely
mounted. A firm mating results in good contact between the heatsink’s base and
the GPU core and more efficient heat conduction. Ideally installation should
also be a simple procedure with as the user having to handle as few pieces of
hardware as possible.

TEST METHODOLOGY

Our test procedure is an in-system test, designed to determine whether the
cooler is adequate for use in a low-noise system. By adequately cooled,
we mean cooled well enough that no misbehavior related to thermal overload is
exhibited. Thermal misbehavior in a graphics card can show up in a variety of
ways, including:

• Sudden system shutdown, reboot without warning, or loss of display signal
• Jaggies and other visual artifacts on the screen.
• Motion slowing and/or screen freezing.

Any of these misbehaviors are annoying at best and dangerous at worst —
dangerous to the health and lifespan of the graphics card, and sometimes to
the system OS.

Test Platform

• Intel
  Pentium D 930 Presler core processor. Official TDP of 95W.
• Gigabyte G-Power 2 Pro
  heatsink, modified with a Scythe
  Slip Stream 500RPM 120mm fan.
• AOpen
  i945Ga-PHS motherboard – Intel i945Ga Chipset; built-in VGA.
• Corsair
  XMS2 memory 2x1GB, DDR2-800
• HIS Radeon HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo
  graphics card. Approximate power draw of 215W.
• Seagate Momentus 5400.3
  160GB, 5400RPM, notebook hard drive, suspended
• Seasonic S12-600
  ATX12V v2.0 compliant power supply, modified with a Scythe
  Slip Stream 800RPM 120mm fan @ 5V.
• Antec P180B case,
  modified in detail below.
• Nexus 120mm
  fan, two connected to a variable fan speed controller.
• Microsoft
  Windows XP Professional SP3 operating system
• ATI
  Catalyst 10.9 graphics driver

Measurement and Analysis Tools

• CPUBurn
  processor stress software.
• FurMark
  stability test to stress the GPU.
• GPU-Z to
  monitor GPU temperatures.
• Infrared Thermometer to measure VRM temperatures.
• A custom-built variable fan speed controller to power the system
  fan
• PC-based spectrum analyzer:
  SpectraPlus with ACO Pacific mic and M-Audio digital
  audio interfaces.
• Anechoic chamber
  with ambient level of 11 dBA or lower

Today’s coolers are tested on a HIS Radeon HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo, a factory-overclocked single GPU card that draws about 215W by our estimates. The stock VRM heatsink is left on for convenience.

Our main test consists of FurMark stability test running in conjunction with
CPUBurn to stress both the graphics card and processor simultaneously. This
combination produces more CPU/GPU stress than a typical gaming session. As our
test system has very limited airflow, our results are not indicative of a real-world
situation, but rather a worse-case scenario. If the heatsink in question can
cool the card and its components adequately in this environment it means there
will be some degree of thermal headroom when deployed in a more conventional
situation. The GPU temperature is recorded using GPU-Z, and an infrared thermometer is used to manually take the temperature of the VRMs on the trace side of the card.

The coolers are tested at various speeds to represent a good cross-section of
its airflow and noise performance. Noise is measured and recorded with our test
system on with the heatsink installed. Our mic is positioned at a distance of
one meter from the center of the case’s left side panel at a 45 degree angle.

TEST RESULTS

Noise

The Accelero Xtreme’s fans were fairly quiet below 9V, and effectively inaudible at 5V in our two fan VGA test system. The fans sound remarkably smooth and soft, though it develops a small degree of whine above 9V and turbulence about 10V. At 8V and below, the acoustic profile is completely benign and innocuous.

The wave form showed a lot of noise at lower frequencies, but this was caused mainly by the other components in the test system. The contribution from the Xtreme plus had higher frequencies in the 400 to 900 Hz range, but it was not enough to subjectively alter the overall sound quality of the machine.

Performance

The best dual fan cooler we’ve tested, the GELID Icy Vision was absolutely destroyed by the Accelero Xtreme Plus. Though it is a big improvement over the stock cooler, the GELID was simply outclassed by the three-fan Arctic Cooling behemoth. At similar noise levels, the Xtreme Plus delivered massive improvements in GPU and VRM temperatures, about 24°C and 12°C respectively.

At 5V/17 dBA, the Icy Vision wasn’t able to keep the GPU cool enough and we saw the card’s clock speeds throttle in response. With the Xtreme Plus, the 5870 remained stable with the fans at 5V, a level that generated no measurable noise increase in our test system, though the VRM temperature was quite high. Cooling a 215W card while remaining essentially inaudible is simply astonishing.

MP3 SOUND RECORDINGS

These recordings were made with a high
resolution, lab quality, digital recording system inside SPCR’s
own 11 dBA ambient anechoic chamber, then converted to LAME 128kbps
encoded MP3s. We’ve listened long and hard to ensure there is no audible degradation
from the original WAV files to these MP3s. They represent a quick snapshot of
what we heard during the review.

These recordings are intended to give you an idea of how the product sounds
in actual use — one meter is a reasonable typical distance between a computer
or computer component and your ear. The recording contains stretches of ambient
noise that you can use to judge the relative loudness of the subject. Be aware
that very quiet subjects may not be audible — if we couldn’t hear it from
one meter, chances are we couldn’t record it either!

The recording starts with 10 seconds of room ambiance, followed by 10 seconds
of the VGA test system without a video card installed, and then the actual product’s
noise at various levels. For the most realistic results, set the volume
so that the starting ambient level is just barely audible, then don’t change
the volume setting again.

• VGA
  Test System with Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus at 1m
  — 7V (16 dBA@1m)
  — 9V (19 dBA@1m)
  — 12V (24 dBA@1m)

Comparatives:

• VGA
  Test System with GELID Icy Vision at 1m
  — 5V (17 dBA@1m)
  — 7V (21 dBA@1m)
  — 9V (23 dBA@1m)
  — 12V (27 dBA@1m)

FINAL THOUGHTS

The factory-overclocked HIS Radeon HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo is a most power hungry single-GPU card, and the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus cooled it almost casually, delivering comfortable temperatures in our hot, low airflow VGA test system with very little additional noise. Our testing loads are more strenuous than any modern PC game, and our low airflow testbed hotter than that of most web reviewers, so in more conventional conditions, there should be plenty of headroom for hotter cards and higher ambient temperatures. The cooling proficiency of the Accelero Xtreme Plus is just plain ridiculous, blowing the best dual fan models out of the water.

The fans are acoustically sound and can be controlled via software if plugged into the graphics card’s fan header, a rarity for a GPU heatsink. If you prefer to power them externally, it also ships with a 7V/12V molex adapter. For a HD 5870, using the 7V connector is perfectly fine — it’s very quiet at that level and having the fan spin faster is overkill.

The AC’s other big strength is the dead simple installation procedure. Only four screws are required to get the main heatsink on, a step that can be completed in seconds. We were pleased to skip the part where we fiddle with the big bag of nuts, bolts, caps, springs, and what have you used by other manufacturers. The thermal adhesive included to secure the memory and VRM heatsinks works well and it is a big step up from the weak thin film AC has used in the past. However, the adhesive is rather thick, making it particularly difficult to apply in small amounts. Thankfully it can be cleaned off fairly easy if the heatsinks need to be removed for any reason.

Of course all this GPU cooling goodness comes at a cost. An Xtreme Plus with a complete set of memory/VRM heatsinks will run you US$70~75, which is about double the price of most dual fan heatsinks. It is a steep price, but the performance benefit is substantial, allowing end-users to cool 200W+ cards quietly without worry. We would have preferred a smaller cooler to get the job done, but reality is a harsh mistress. The mammoth Accelero Xtreme Plus is a necessary evil for serious gamers who value low noise levels as much as high frame rates.

Our thanks to Arctic Cooling for the Accelero Xtreme Plus sample used in this review.

Accelero Xtreme Plus: SPCR Editor’s Choice Award

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Articles of Related Interest
GELID Icy Vision Dual Fan VGA Cooler
HIS HD Radeon 5870 iCooler V Turbo
Scythe Setsugen GPU Cooler
ZEROtherm CoolMaxx 2000 GPU
Cooler
Scythe Musashi Dual Fan GPU Cooler
[PostScript Added]
Thermaltake Duorb VGA Cooler:
Are Two Orbs Better Than One?

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