After buying a GTX480 and grilling some fine steaks on it I finally decided to see how it would work as a graphics card or a larger grill and ordered an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus II. After a fun filled day....yup most of the day in which I had to get past 5 factory stripped screws with rest just cross-threaded! Anyway, if you have a PNY GTX480 and you decide you want to spend a whole day having fun get yourself three cheap screwdriver kits and some gloves just in case.....
As you can find more detailed reviews with a Google search I'll cover two things I didn't see mentioned in them. The first of which is that mine came with 1 slightly bad fan, I use a lot of AC products and this is starting to bother me because after years of good experiences I have encountered several bad fans from them over the last two years. The second issue is that the thermal adhesive shares similar properties with water.....I mixed it for the recommended 5 minutes and proceeded to make a huge mess. After 3 hours out of the 5 hour curing period it was still like water and I broke out my Arctic Silver thermal epoxy...this is a must because the stuff that came with the heat sink was awful. They are trying to push these up to nearly $100 which is the price of a nice Mid Tower so both of these issues shouldn't occur.
So the quality wasn't a 10/10 but what really matters is the cooling performance. It's impressive while also being very quiet. So here are the temperatures from my 19C room and BF3, I could use Furmark but I'm keeping it realistic.
Stock Settings: 85C 61% Fan(only slightly louder than my 200mm fans)
W/ Fan Profile: 72C 73% Fan(annoying noise)
10% Overclock W/ Fan Profile: 75C 77% Fan, Unstable
10% OC W/Fan Profile+Fan on Grilling Surface: 71C 70% Fan, Stable
Stock Settings: 58C 44% Fan(Silent)
Stock W/ Full Fan: 51C (Same noise level as my Very Quiet 200mm Fans)
The following are all at 100% Fan speed because it's so quiet, the idle 480 Fan made more noise
700 Core 924 Memory: 51C
750 Core 1000 Memory: 52C
801 Core 1050 Memory: 54C
861 Core 1100 Memory: 56C(Maximum Stock Voltage O.C.)
905 [email protected] 1100 Memory: 62C
This cooler is a solid 8/10 as far as I'm concerned and it's only really knocked down by the small quality defects and the soon to be large price tag. I haven't covered things like the length because those have been thoroughly covered, so hopefully this helps somebody buy some good thermal epoxy!
As you can find more detailed reviews with a Google search I'll cover two things I didn't see mentioned in them. The first of which is that mine came with 1 slightly bad fan, I use a lot of AC products and this is starting to bother me because after years of good experiences I have encountered several bad fans from them over the last two years. The second issue is that the thermal adhesive shares similar properties with water.....I mixed it for the recommended 5 minutes and proceeded to make a huge mess. After 3 hours out of the 5 hour curing period it was still like water and I broke out my Arctic Silver thermal epoxy...this is a must because the stuff that came with the heat sink was awful. They are trying to push these up to nearly $100 which is the price of a nice Mid Tower so both of these issues shouldn't occur.
So the quality wasn't a 10/10 but what really matters is the cooling performance. It's impressive while also being very quiet. So here are the temperatures from my 19C room and BF3, I could use Furmark but I'm keeping it realistic.
Stock Heatsink
Stock Settings: 85C 61% Fan(only slightly louder than my 200mm fans)
W/ Fan Profile: 72C 73% Fan(annoying noise)
10% Overclock W/ Fan Profile: 75C 77% Fan, Unstable
10% OC W/Fan Profile+Fan on Grilling Surface: 71C 70% Fan, Stable
Accelero Xtreme Plus II
Stock Settings: 58C 44% Fan(Silent)
Stock W/ Full Fan: 51C (Same noise level as my Very Quiet 200mm Fans)
The following are all at 100% Fan speed because it's so quiet, the idle 480 Fan made more noise
700 Core 924 Memory: 51C
750 Core 1000 Memory: 52C
801 Core 1050 Memory: 54C
861 Core 1100 Memory: 56C(Maximum Stock Voltage O.C.)
905 [email protected] 1100 Memory: 62C
This cooler is a solid 8/10 as far as I'm concerned and it's only really knocked down by the small quality defects and the soon to be large price tag. I haven't covered things like the length because those have been thoroughly covered, so hopefully this helps somebody buy some good thermal epoxy!
