Arctic Cooling Accelero 4870X2 Review

Annisman

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Hey guys, I preordered this bad boy, and got it early today. As far as I know, nobody has reviewed this cooler yet so I wanted to show you guys some results!




Notice the 8 heat pipes used to cool both gpu cores:

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4870x2 with the stock cooler off.

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Now the cooler is ready to go on, after the memory thermal pads and heatsinks for voltage regulators etc. are installed.

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And it is mounted! Notice, this cooler is more than 2 slots thick, probably closer to 3, so alot of room is required. In fact, the bottom fans almost touch my 48701GB !

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My rig is complete.

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Now, Arctic Cooling claims a 50 celcius drop in temperature, this however (not surprisingly) is not the case. My initial results are still fabulous however.

My idle temps have dropped from 80+Celcius to low 60's *EDIT* {After reseating the heatsink and applying AS5 my idle temps are now a balmy 45C}, and full load temps have gone from high 90C and even 100C occasionally to about 75C maximum.

Not only are there significant temp drops, my whole rig is SO much quieter now, whisper quiet in fact, even when my gpu is at full load. All of this is attained by using 40% speed on the accellero fan which is whisper quiet, no doubt if I cranked the fans my temps would drop alot more, but there is no point to do that.

The installation of this cooler has been a nightmare however, I will not go into full detail, but be prepared to do alot of baby punching and cursing, also Arctic Cooling failed to send me a 8pin extender so I had to jam my original 8 pin into the card, which was difficult and frustrating.

Price: 85 USD
Installation: Time consuming, frustrating.
Materials: Everything was in good shape, but they didn't send an 8 pin extender
Performance: Phenomenal temp drops
Noise: There is none

Altogether I give this cooler an 8/10


I hope you have enjoyed this mini review, I will be in Iowa for the next 5 days so I can't answer any questions till I get back.

 

slimborama

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Here's mine. I LOVE this thing... but be warned... I nearly broke my fingers trying to screw the backplate crossbars back in. That was ABSURDLY hard.

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wuzertheloser

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AGREED
I still need to get one of the crossbars in
I only got one in last night
It seems as if the stock screws are barely long enough to reach the screws.
 

samchoc

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Does it normaly come with an 8pin extender??? I ordered mine 2 days ago and i should receive it soon and i dont want any trouble... :S
 

Leonhart

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I'm in the UK and it seems you can only get this in USA, lucky sods, so I've ordered mine today and wait. Hopefully it won't take as long as my psu replacement (7weeks now!) which the original only lasted 3 months.

I had a look at the instructions. What's with the preparation '6' part where you clean the memory and voltage regulator chips carefully with an eraser? I presume preparation '5' is when you take off the original thermal pads.

Fingers crossed I get my 8pin connector too. It's not like I can buy that cable on it's own somewhere local.
 

Annisman

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If you don't get the 8 pin extender, you can still jam your original in, but it is very tight and bends your cooler in the process, stupid arctic cooling
 

Leonhart

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Silly question but which way do the fans blow (on to the card or away)? I've got 2 120mm fans at the base of my pc currently blowing air in and I would imagine having two opposing air flows would not help. My sound card though is in the way so I guess it's not too bad but thought it would be worth asking. A friend reminded me about warranty which I'm guessing will be void but I'll check the terms tonight.
 

Annisman

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The 3 fans blow directly on the heatsink, so, in general the airflow is 'up'. Also, although it voids your card manufacturing warranty, arctic cooling has there own 5 year warranty on the cooler, which I think is pretty hefty.
 

clerick

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Hey guys my cooler really did drop 50c. Although I am using reverse atx and my fans are venting upwards.

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Initial impressions: whoa its huge. It didn't take that long to install (just the screws that hold the plate were a bastard because they have springs, you gotta REALLY push down on the screws).

Stock cooler idle 29% fan speed temp: core 1 51c core 2 46c
Accelero hd4870x2 29% fan speed: core 1 35c core 2 31c

Sound stock 39% is 2x LOUDER then accelero 100% fan speed. That's insane!
Ingame: going to test in a second


Ingame fan speed of 60% on accelero. It's so quiet I can ever hear my cpu fan on my true which I cant usually hear!

Stock 46% fan speed Left 4 dead (VERY loud stock fan, my biggest gripe was because it was so damn loud. very shader intensive, gives me high temps).

Core 1: 82c, core 2: 81c
VDDC: 92c 95c 95c

Accelero hd4870x2 60% fan speed (Dead silent).
Core 1: 46c core2: 44c
VDDC: 69c 70c 71c


Idle temps:
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Furmark:

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UT3:
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Annisman

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Those are some very impressive results! On a side note, my gpu's seem to be runing even cooler a few days after I installed the accelero xtreme. I now idle at about 50C, when I boot my computer I have seen them as low as 34C!


Clerick, I've got a question for you. When you run Furmark, please try the Stability Test with 4XAA + Post Processsing + XtremeBurning Mode at the highest resolution that you can run. (basically everything maxxed out) and tell me your temps, and tell me how stable it is, also, what Catalyst version are you running, I am on 9.4

I ask this because for some reason my card crashes after about 2 minutes of running furmark at that setting, the gpu cores stay nice and cool, about 70C maximum each, but it still crashes. Also, when it crashes the second red LED from the left stays lit on my card. I wonder if my memory is cooking too hot ? Please tell me your results thanks.

BTW the card seems stable when running games and other gpu stress tests.
 

clerick

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I've heard of OCCT instability of the hd4870 line due to some VDDC mess up due to reference design. Doesn't matter no game will ever stress the card like the apps do (I left left 4 dead overnight running, not a single bump). Also I meant VDDC above not gpu ram.
 

Annisman

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Sorry for double post but, I reasearched the VDDC and I found out that the VDDC Current is the power being given to your card, I ran deadspace for a few minutes and my VDDC Current jumps gradually from 65 all the way to 112! Can this be safe, or correct ? Also, as my current rises my VDDC Slave Temps have gotten all the way up to 130C!!! I am shocked that this did not result in a crash. Somebody with any knowledge on this subject please give me some input.
 

The_Blood_Raven

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Never heard of that, both my 4870 X2s @ 800 core/ 1100 mem are totally stable after a run-through of OCCT.
 

Annisman

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A little update on my problem, I have run through both Crysis and Dead Space, trying to stress my gpu's in a 'normal' enviornment, and both Rivatuner and GPU-Z have reported my VRM temperatues all the way up to 145C WITHOUT A CRASH however. I have read that the VRM cut-off temperature was 126C, so something is wrong, either the apps are not reporting the temps accurately, or my VRM's are gettting nice and toasty with no ill affects, comments ?
 

clerick

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You sure when you installed the cooler you removed the blue tape as well as the clear tape (there was tape on both sides) before you applied the vdcc thermal pads?
Here's my run of furmark max settings 8xaa xtreme burn test/stability at max res for 6 minutes:
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Annisman

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yea, I removed the blue tape, I had to do alot of jimmying with the cooler to get the two X brackets on the card, maybe the heatsink got knocked off a bit then. I mounted a 120 mm fan at the end of the cooler to help cool the VRM's, it helps a bit, but I still get temps in the 120-130 C range, which not only is insanely high, it is kind of impractical because I believe the card is supposed to shut down at those temps. and mine is not.

Worst case scenario I could try and remount the cooler, but let's be honest, nobody wants to put those X brackets back in unless they have to. Not to mention my actual GPU temps are great.
 

Annisman

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Update:

I went through with it and removed the accelero Xtreme, I double checked all the heat sinks, and all the places of thermal contact. From what I could see, there was nothing out of place.

I went ahead and applied some AS5 to my gpu cores and put the heatsinks back on. Beleive it or not the X brackets which took hours to install the first time, went in in about 5 minutes!

Finally, I tested Furmark, and Dead Space again, to my surprise my temps are MUCH better! The highest my VRM temps have gotten is 104 C (which is actually an acceptable number for these things) Furmark did not crash within the first few minutes, which it had done previously.

My one 'set' of VRM's run at about 54C idle, and my other 'set' run at about 48C idle, very respectable numbers.

My only guess is that there was a screw or two loose, or a thermal pad was not making good contact, but like I said nothing looked wrong when I took it apart. Lastly, my gpu core temps are even better than before, thanks to the AS5. I now idle at around 42C on both cores, which was something I could never achieve with the stock cooler, even at 100%