Which aftermarket cooler for HD6950?

I've come to the point where I'm quite positive I need to upgrade the cooling solution on my Sapphire 6950 2GB.
So far I've been able to get away with the stock cooler, but in the past couple of days I've seen the temps on it reach 90s while gaming and it froze on me once.
So I'm thinking of upgrading to an after-market cooler for it... Not really considering water at this time; that is for a future build.

I'm looking at these two:

Thermalright Shaman

Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme

Price is not the deciding factor... I'm looking at which one will give me the best cooling to noise ratio.

So would the Shaman with the 140mm fan be quieter than the Accelero Xtreme with the three 92mm fans?

thanks
Sebastian

ive got the accelero and at 100% fan you can hardly hear it, im not too familiar with the shaman although i would think the accelero would cool better because of its coverage.

Thanks poofpoof...

I have been looking at that Accelero cooler and it seems that the difference in temperatures is minimal between it and the Shaman while the noise levels are definitely lower... Seems like a winner to me.

one question since you own the Accelero... Did it come with the little heatsinks for the VRAM and VRMs? Or do you have to buy those separate?

Thanks again
Sebastian

i had to buy them seperate, it only cost about $5 but i heard there are some that come with the little heatsinks, depends on where you buy it i guess..

although on a different note, you might want to consider buying the ram and vrm cooler accessories from a different company or maybe getting some thermal pads to go with the vr001, the ones that arctic cooling comes with is a permanant solution as they pack it with thermal glue, ive heard you can remove it later but its not reccomended as it may destroy your components, if you dont plan on putting the stock cooler back on later i guess it doesnt matter too much....

And thank you again good Sr. I am leaning towards the Accelero Xtreme at the moment; it is way more compact than the Shaman and quieter as well... I will definitely look for an alternative to the thermal tape that comes with the heatsinks; last thing I want to do is pull an IC off the pcb trying to get one of them heatsinks off.

not a problem at all, im really impressed with this cooler, it lowered the amb temp in my case and shows its true colours when you put it to work, i can play crysis 2 for a good hour at absolutely full spec 2048x1152 and i only see an 7-12c raise in temps.

Overclockers actually did a review of the Shaman.. Go check it out before you make up your mind. I'm using a rather loud Zalman VF3000 for my HD5850. but I've set the speed at 50% via my bios, and it's dead quiet and still keeps my GPU under 60 in most cases.

You'll find both of your options are near silent. But just remember the Shaman is best paired with one of Thermalrights VRM cooling solutions, and that it's also a tri-slot cooler. As far as I can tell the Accelero is only a dual slot.. So if you need the space, stick to the Accelero.

Thanks Mjolnir... I did read the review on the Shaman that was published here at OCF along with a number of others published at other sites...

The one review I found that compared both coolers that I am looking at had the Shaman beat out the Accelero by a slim margin in the temperature side of things (I think they were within 3C of each other) and the Accelero beating out the Shaman in the noise department (also by just a hair on this one).

At this point I am really torn... I like the Shaman because it would be a one click and done thing as it comes with everything needed to get it going in one box; whereas the Accelero requires a separate purchase of the little heatsinks....
Right now space is not an issue, but a cooler covering all three of my PCIE slots just leaves me no room for upgrading at a later date...
I really don't know. I like both coolers; and at the same time, each one of them has things that I don't like.

Oh well... I will give this some thought and will make a purchase some time next week.

If your card has a layout anything like mine, you'll also need a decent cooler for the VDDC thingies lol. From what I can tell the Shaman does NOT come with a proper larger heatsink for that line.. I.e.

http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/product_page/vga/vrm/product_vga_cooler_r3_r4.html

Something like that for those power regulators. Cos they heat up a lot! I bought the R4 for mine but found the Zalmans cover to be adequate enough. Even at 1.2 volts (my stock is 1.0875) my VDDC never goes above like 80 ish. Before I had this proper heatsink sitting on it I could easily hit 120+ lol. >.>.

So whilst the Shaman comes with lots of heatsinks.. I found putting the smaller heatsink blocks on the VDDC points to just not work so well.. But that may have been due to a lack of air over the area too. So I'm not sure how it works with the Shaman. Just be mindful of those areas!

I think I've lost my point somewhere.. Lol. .

Found this on a site:
I got it in today and installed it. Took me 30 minutes.

How good is it? 50 degrees celsius max temp so far in kombuster running oc'ed at 900/1400 and the fan noise is less than my case fans, namely scythe s-flex f and 1200 rpm slipstream.

A freaking + .

Idle goes down to 23 degress lol.

That's for the Shaman. But he doesn't specify anything about the VRMs/Power Modulators.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=335944

Another read concerning the Shaman and what not.. Also mentions the Accelero too!

Thanks Mjolnir.... I will keep this in mind for when I make my purchase.

The review that I was paying the most attention was this one: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/thermalright-shaman.html
So it's not on the 69XX series of cards, but still relevant.

For two reasons:
- It's xbitlabs
- The two coolers that I'm looking at get compared.

If we leave the reference Radeon HD 5830 cooler aside for a minute, we can conclude that Thermalright Shaman cooler is obviously not the quietest product tested today. Nevertheless, it remains acoustically comfortable up to 950 RPM and very quiet up to 800 RPM (at 33 dBA). Even at maximum rotation speed Thermalright Shaman is still quieter than Accelero XTREME 5870, which is another advantage of the newcomer. As for the noise comparison between the two different fans on the Shaman cooler, Slip Stream 120 mm Slim at 1200 RPM generates as much noise as TY-140 at 950 RPM and at 1550 RPM – as much noise as the default fan of the Thermalright Shaman. As for the advantage the two alternative cooling products have over the reference Radeon HD 5830 cooler, there is nothing to say really – everything is on the diagram.
Conclusion

As a result, things do not look so good for Thermalright Shaman. If we compare it against the primary competitor – Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870, then Shaman will be just a little bit more effective, but at the same time it costs $7 more (it is simply quite expensive to begin with), is noisier, blocks one PCI-slot more and may prevent the side panel from closing in some system cases. Moreover, Shaman doesn’t have a solid heatsink for the VRM components with screw-on retention, like the one from Arctic Cooling. We could claim that the Accelero XTREME one is not universal after all, but we all know very well that Arctic Cooling already released an Accelero XTREME Plus model compatible with Nvidia based graphics accelerators besides Radeon HD 5870 and 5830.

Uh... So which is quieter . You sure this is a good review site haha.

LOL...

That's what I get for going 48 hours without sleep... My reading comprehension is shut to hell... I did not catch that part.

TBH; I'm leaning towards the Accelero Xtreme; it just seems cleaner to me than the bulky Shaman... Even if the TR beats it in cooling performance by a couple degrees.... But then again; I've also started to look at water cooling gear... I may just break down and get my daily driver wet and be done with it...

+1 for Accelero Xtreme

I installed this on a friends 6970 and his temps were reduced by nearly 20'c its an excellent cooler and installation is a snap.

I don't have any experience with the Shaman but I have heard it is simply an OK cooler. However I do have an HR03 on an old 260 and it performs exceptionally well and it seems like the Shaman is based off the same design, however as you mentioned the design is extremely bulky and it really interfered with my previous sli setup.

Well... Thanks all of you for the advise.
I have decided to skip this all together and get my daily driver pc wet... so I'm not going to be getting either one of these coolers; instead, I will be getting watercooling gear for both cpu and gpu...
Just in case anyone wants to know; I'm getting this block: AquagrATIx for HD 6970 and 6950 for the GPU...