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Selecting an aftermarket heatsink/fan cooler for a 6870 GPU

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Aberration

Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2009
Location
St. Louis Metro
Ok;

So, I thought I could do a budget build with a single loop for CPU/GPUs with water cooling. Turns out that's going to be a waste of time.

I recently upgraded from a EVGA 285GTX to crossfired 6870 XFX cards (non-Double-D). My 285GTX was overclocked to EVGA SSC specs, and has ran fantastic, quiet, and cool since the day I bought it. With switching to the XFX 6870 cards, they do NOT use the squirrel cage fans like the EVGA 285 card had, and as such are intolerably loud to me. So, I'm searching for a more quiet solution to cool these cards that won't break the bank (no point in spending 500+ in water cooling on cards that cost 160/ea before rebates). I've researched all I can to find what out there is available for these cards, and I have come up with the following five:

1. Zalman VF3000A: http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=385

2. Arctic Cooling Accelero Mono Plus or Twin Turbo II: http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga.html

3. GELID Solutions Icy Vision Rev2: http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=17&id=52

4. Xigmatek BiFrost 2: http://www.xigmatek.com/product.php?productid=124

Another member here (ssjwizard) said that he has a friend with the Gelid cooler and the guy was happy with it.

My concerns with all of these coolers is overall height. I have an older Asus motherboard that has 62mm on the center to center distance between the card board.

More than one of the manufacturers I listed above are rather vague about the dimensions on the card. Only Arctic Cooling has blueprints on their site showing actual dimensions, but unfortunately they don't have the total height dimension for their Twin Turbo II (I have e-mailed them asking for it).

Does anyone else have any real world experiences with these coolers that they can comment on? I can easily Google "<model number> cooler review" and find articles out there, but even they are vague about dimensions to a certain extent.

Thanks in advance for any insight lent.

-Abe
 
1. zalman
2.gelid
3. artic
4.xigmatek

i got friends who has them. tested it with identical specs "differs only with the mobo" and same room for ambient comparison.
the zalman performs 5c better than gelid.

if your ambient temps is arround 10c-20c then you can take the gelid.
what i liked most with that zalman is i dont need to buy a blower for cleaning its very simple to remove the shroud/cover/fans and wash it with water.
 
They are all better than the reference design cooler by a fair margin. Which one looks the best IN YOUR COMPUTER? Thats the one you should pick.
 
They are all better than the reference design cooler by a fair margin. Which one looks the best IN YOUR COMPUTER? Thats the one you should pick.

I'm a function before fashion guy.

Since I have the Corsair 600T case, it has the black mesh grill, which I have filled with four 120MM Blue LED fans.

So nobody will see them once installed.

Since Cool3st has rated the performance order, it's simply time now to figure out which one will fit within the required dimensions.
 
Even if they fit side by side with new coolers, you really need to check that maybe your third PCIe slot can run it. You NEED the space for airflow. Most sftermarket coolers are even thicker.

Look into that, if your thirs slot can run 8x and the first at 16x, you'll be okay.

Otherwise a waste of money. The first card needs airspace, good 1/2" from backp[lane of second card.

That's why lots of us WC our SLI/Xfire. No way to cool them unless we use WC. And yea, it's not a budget friendly thing.
 
Well crud... The Gelid is here (just ordered one to try it), and the heat pipes hit two of the four capacitors on the 6870 card... :(

Is it possible to unsolder the caps and put them on the bottom of the board? I tried using my Radio Shack de-soldering iron (iron with an air bulb on it), and couldn't get the solder to melt. Wondering what sort of solder they used on the board.
 
Well, after some creative engineering with a small brass tack hammer, I VERY CAREFULLY peened over the end of the tube, to where it JUST clears the cap.

The awesome news is that with Star Wars on full, and the GPU @ 99% activity, temps are staying rock solid at 47C, with idle temps at 38C.

Tons of difference from the stock cooler, which at idle was 48-50C, and I can't even hear the two fans on this cooler.
 
Well, installed the 2nd card with the factory cooler, and it clears the top card. Even with a minimal (3-4mm) air gap between bottom and top card, the top card with 99% load is still only running at 56C, which is still significantly better than before, and again, I can't hear the fans.

So, on the bottom card, I'm going to run into two issues... I'm going to lose my parallel card that I need for my old arse vinyl cutter, and the SATA connectors are going to hit the heat sink. I can't use 90 degree SATA connectors due to where the motherboard header pins are for the case.

I have yet to install the Crossfire bridge so I dont know how that will affect heat load.

Guess it's time to find a shorter cooler for the bottom.
 
Sorry man, sorry... Here's a photo of my junk... Please ignore the coat of dust on the power supply.

The cooler came with a adapter to plug into a motherboard header, or the large 4-pin power supply plug. So, I stuck it in the motherboard fan header.

As you can see, not much room between the cards. Glad I only ordered one of these to try it, because the other one sure wouldn't have fit without a motherboard change with SATA connectors mounted in a different position/location.

Came with plenty of stick-on heat sinks... Hope the thin double sided tape they included holds.
 

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Heat sinks are still sticking, and with playing BF3 in crossfire (max settings), the card with the cooler (top card) is running 10C cooler than the one with the factory card. Additionally, I hear the factory card's fan spool up, but the cooler is nice and quiet.
 
Looks pretty good! I see you did have to move down a PCIe slot for space. That top card has room to breath now.

Your doing great on handling the minor modding issues perfectly.

On the caps, yea lead free, could be higher temp solder. It also could be due to a hole through used on multi layer boards. Take a lot of careful heat and a real quality heated solder sucker set iron, temp controlled and all. I do some comonent replacement and it can be a major pain to get the holes clean after removing the bad cap etc.

Better you do it like you did, good work!
 
Looks pretty good! I see you did have to move down a PCIe slot for space. That top card has room to breath now.

Actually, no. The 6870 normally takes up 2 slots. With the Gelid cooler on it, it takes up 3 full slots.

I got lucky on my older motherboard having 3 slots worth of space between the PCIe slots.

Like I think I said earlier, I only have about 3-4MM worth of clearance from the top card to the back side of the bottom card. When I add in the other cooler, which I'm pretty certain will be the Arctic Cooling Accelero Mono Plus, I'll have to pull out my parallel adapter card to make room for it.

Eventually I'll upgrade to a Fatality or Sabertooth motherboard, and hopefully the spacing will be greater.

At any rate, at least it's performing the way I want to... It's dead quiet and I gained a 10C drop in temp on the card at 100% usage. So it was money well spent.
 
Further follow up. Today the Mono Plus came in and was installed.

The cards at 100% GPU usage are now running at 60C (top) and 50C (bottom) with zero audible fan noise.

I couldn't be happier, and the entire solution was under $100.00.

I'd almost rather have two of the Monos, personally... Bigger fan and smaller footprint.
 
Hi, I hate to resurrect a dead thread, but with the lack of information out there, I bought an Icy Vision for my XFX 6870, and of course it doesn't fit. So I'm looking into *making* it fit.

Aberration, could you go into a little more detail about the process to modify the Gelid part into fitting? Is it just as simple as getting a tack hammer and just knocking that heat pipe out of the way?

Oh, and is it still working? Or did modifying the aftermarket cooler cause heating issues down the line?
 
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