Customer Reviews

Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Passive VGA Cooler For GeForce 7950/ Radeon X1950

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this for my XFX 8800GS (yes it works on the 8800GS even though it doesn't say this). My stock fan/heatsink which was insanely loud had an idle temp of 48°C with a full load temp of 78°C. After putting this thing on, I get 45°C idle and °58C under load! A drop of 20 degrees Celsius without a fan! To be fair there is an 80mm fan mounted perpendicular near the top of the fins on the side of my case, but even with it off, it never got above 63°C and the stock temperatures above benefited from this same fan. So the comparison is 1:1.

Pros:
1. Silent
2. Performs FANTASTICALLY
3. Cheap
4. Straightforward install if you take your time and are careful
5. Good tolerances and tight fit
6. You can add their branded 80mm fans or get a near-silent 120mm fan and zip tie it to the rig if you have the room and are doing overclocking.

Cons:
1. One of the RAM heatsinks didn't stick very well. Had to use another. Luckily I needed only 6. If I had the full 8, I'd be in trouble. The instructions state to use an eraser after a tissue. In retrospect a Q-tip with alcohol might have been better. But I swear all RAM chips were equally clean. I think the thermal adhesive wasn't that great.
2. The thin layer of thermal paste included on the heatsink wasn't protected in any way. It should have had a plastic sleeve like stock fans with retail CPU packages. I smeared some without even realizing.
3. The plastic covers on the baseplate and the top and bottom of the radiator are rather cheap. I experienced no problems, but it strikes me as odd that these weren't simply aluminum or copper to complement the rig and serve a functional purpose instead of the purely cosmetic.
4. It's pretty big. Seriously, given the performance, I'd be surprised if they couldn't build a model 4cm shorter to fit smaller cases and it would work nearly as well.

I am giving this a very happy 4. It definitely worked as advertised, which is a surprise to be honest. I think it should ship with a couple of extra heatsinks or replacement thermal adhesive. Did I mention that it was SILENT and performs much better than the stock heatsink and fan (which was rather heavy)? 20 Deg. Better. It's supposed to work in SLI setups as well, but check the company website for that - because it's not exactly small!.

This product performs much better than the stock solution that came with my ATI HD 4850, however there are some compatibility issues with this particular combination:

The included voltage regulator module (VRM) heatsinks are **incompatible** with the ATI HD 4850 so I recommend you to get the Arctic Cooling Turbo Module (search keywords: Arctic Cooling VGATurbo) or attach a 120mm fan with zip ties to avoid overheating. Moreover, there's no enough clearance between one of the heatpipes and one of the RAM heatsinks, you either have to bend one heatsink fin, or leave the RAM module partially or totally exposed.

Installation proved to be difficult because of the above mentioned modification and also because the RAM heatsinks do not stick well to the modules. Also, the plastic clamp mechanism requires precise alignment which even when installed correctly, kept popping out of place risking the integrity of the (optional) Turbo Module fans.

Despite all these issues, I'm satisfied with its performance, paired with the Turbo Module my card has reached idle temperatures of 36C (same system temperature with case door open).

Pros:
* Drastically reduces card temperatures
* Silent even with the optional "Turbo Module"
* Visually looks great

Cons:
* Difficult installation with ATI HD 4850
* Huge! (might not fit in certain computer cases)
* No VRM heatsinks for ATI HD 4800 series (hopefully will be fixed in future revisions)
* RAM heatsinks adhesive is weak
* Crossfire connection might require modification since the heat spreaders are in the way

Well I had have not enough space inside my computer to place this awesome device , so I decided to deform it with a hammer (oh yes you read it right)I had to be extremely gentle with the bending actions, leaving the circumference of the heatpipes intact (not colapsed) and I fully angled the upper third of the device 90 degrees, so I can place the cover of my PC case.
I was aware that I was running the risk of frying my nVidia 7900 GT video card but thanks god the Accero S1 actually works, keeping the GPU as cold as with the original cooler with that anoying noisy fan.

The reason that I gave it a 4 star is because the instruction manual is only for one ATI video card, and the rest of the compatible cards are not mentioned. But It works and it is 0 dB.

I purchased this item based on a recommendation from a friend. I have to say, the heatsink did not look incredibly impressive when I first opened the package. It's light, made of aluminum, and comparing it to the solid copper heatsink that comes originally with the video card, I was a bit doubtful. However, all my doubts were quickly "dissipated" once you see the product in action.

Installation:

The heatsink mounting holes fit perfectly with the ATI 4850, and there are enough of the smaller heatsinks to cover all components that were covered by the original heatsink (and I have 2 left over heatsinks for spares). One of the pipes may come in contact with one of the smaller heat spreader, but just moving the smaller heatsink a little fixes that problem. So I had little trouble setting everything up with all components, and no need to bend any heatpipes.

Performance:

This is what blew me away. The original heatsink was just not doing the job properly. I had the fan running at 55% (which is quite noisy), an extra chassis fan blowing air out just behind the video card, and I had to open the case, and have a room fan blowing air into the chassis when playing some games (I live in warm weather). Even with that incredibly bulky and noisy setup, The video card would be around 45-50 idle, and 65-70 when playing World of Warcraft (which is not too graphic intensive). I even had a big scare once when I installed Battleforge (online game), and all the default graphic settings were on maximum, with Vsync turned off. The graphic card reached a whooping 110 degrees! That was just too much.

After the installation of the heatsink, I was able to remove the room fan, remove the original heatsink with it's noisy fan, left the chassis fan in front of the video card anyway, close my computer case, and have a much quieter setup. Now the system runs at 34 degrees idle (as I'm writing this review), and I played about 4 hours of World of Warcraft yesterday monitoring the temperature (I use Rivatuners hardware monitor for this), and the highest temperature was 40 degrees. Incredible. The heatsink is a bit large, so if you have a small chassis, you may not be able to close the case.

Tl;dr version:

Can be installed in an ATI 4850 and you can expect a temperature drop of 20-30 degrees easily (before: 50 idle, 65 in games. After: 34 idle, 40 in games). Heatsink is also a lot lighter than original heatsink, but much larger. So you do need a wide chassis to be able to close the case. Setup reduces a lot of noise as well. Incredible performance benefit for its price.

Once I got this installed it worked perfectly. Although I haven't pushed my GPU hard yet to see how well this cools, it is keeping the GPU at 33-35c in normal use.

I have this mounted on a Gigabyte ATI(AMD) Radeon HD 5670.

Yes, as others mention, the RAM heat sinks don't stick too well. I had to cut down the voltage controller heat sinks to fit this card. However, I'm not too concerned since this card didn't have heatsinks on the componants to begin with (and didn't get much air flow with the old fan set up either).

I had major install issues with this at first and I had to customize the install. First, following the instructions wasn't hard but, on this card, caused the GPU to overheat and shut down. Careful inspection revealed that the heat sink was not connecting with the processor well. So, first I installed the card without the little spacers. But the problem was also with the support clips you are supposed to install to support the cooler against the top of the card. I think my cooler was a liitle bit tweaked and this combined with Gigabytes card design (which I think maybe the GPU mount is a little thinner because the spacers are thinker than the GPU) meant that even though the screws were tight the heat pipes were tweaking the heat sink plate off the GPU (and the GPU would go into safety shut down mode).
So, for my install I deleated the spacers and used only one support clip on the back top corner of the board. It now works perfectly. I don't expect to need the optional Turbo fans because I have a side mount case fan that blows right on the cooler.
All in all I'm happy. Now if I can get my PSU fan to quiet down some I'll have a virtually silent PC box.

Bought this product after my XFX 8800GT fan started cracking and the card overheating.
It is not difficult to install however make sure you have the right tool and dexterity.
Comes with pre-applied thermal paste so I did not have to purchase it, however the provided heatsink are not enough for the 8800GT and I had to buy Zalman additional ones for $10.

I have added a 120 mm fan on top and have a big drop on temperatures even if it is still hot in here.

Would definitely recommend it especially with such a price.

Replaced a loud fan that always plugged with fine cat hair on the 3870 in my HTPC. I was worried that this fan would be too big for my case and not cool enough; my fears were unfounded.
Install was super easy for me, I removed the 4 screws holding the dual slot cooler on my 3870, cleaned the chip, and secured this on. I didn't even need to put on the included heatsinks because my card had large copper heatsink already attached to the memory chips. My lucky day. Your card may vary from my experience.
I chose to cut the plastic off the Accelero just to get that little extra cooling area, but I shouldn't have bothered. My temps are below the temps without any supplemental cooling.
Careful not to let the fins touch the back circuit traces of any other PCI cards in your case. The aluminum fins are conductive! The heatsink adds some extra weight and will sag your video card down slightly in a traditional case. I moved my computer while it was running and the fins bounced down slightly and touched the back of an HD tuner in the next slot and caused a reboot; but no permanent damage luckily! Not the fault of the Accelero product though, my own.

My rig: MSI 790 cf mobo, MSI 3870 OC video(with the Accelero mounted to it), 4 gig Patriot ram, 1 TB jbod sata drives, in a Lian Li PC7 aluminum case.

This is my 2nd Accelero heat sink. Just as awesome as the 1st with more heat-sinks.

Works great on my HD3870 Card. No clearance issues. Heat-sinks stuck fine. You have to make sure you clean the chips before applying. Alcohol is perfect for the cleaning.

Nice and quiet and very cool running. Thanks again AC

The Accelero S2 is an effective VGA cooler for high-end VGA cards provided that you have enough space to install it and that there is adequate airflow through the case to cool it.

The memory chip heatsinks have a weak adhesive tape that tends to fall off. Also, the included bolt-on VREG heatsink touches a part on the card where it shouldn't. I had to grind the edge down about 1mm with a Dremel tool to make it fit. Otherwise the installation is reasonably easy and the cooler works fairly well, even on an extremely hot Radeon X1900XT.
In my case, it outperformed the standard extremely loud ATI cooler by 20C! It reduced max OC temp from over 95C down to 75C in a case with lots of airflow and a nearby case exhaust fan. The optional "Turbo Module" would probably bring temps down even further.

The contact surface is flat but fairly rough. Fortunately, the pre-applied thermal compound works very well with this finish. You would not want to use a thinner compound such as Arctic Silver 5 without first lapping the contact area.

I've had this accelero s1 unit on an xfx 8800GT (fan was stuck at 100% - a common malfunction with those) for over a year and it's been great. Card idles at 50C, tops at around 70C+.

A little fiddly installing it but not bad. The memory heatsinks do have weak adhesive and some fell off at first, so you might need some extra ones or some adhesive. The unit is too tall to fit in a slim HTPC type case, but a standard mid-tower should be fine.

Make sure you've got decent airflow in your case.

Silence is golden!