Highly disappointed with Accelero X2's in Crossfire

[vixro]

I swapped my HIS coolers out today on my x1900 crossfire setup with Accelero X2's. I was hoping for around the same temperatures, but with the ability to not hear the fans.

After about an hour of cleaning off the pads, the GPU, and installing the coolers carefully I got what I wanted, sort of.

The fans run at 100% speed after I modified the bios and was happy to find that I couldn't hear them at all. Then I got into windows and found out that my temps were on fire...

At 33% fan speed on the HIS coolers, my idle temp was around 40c. In games the fan speed would stay around 50% or so and the temps were 70-80c or so.

With the Accelero coolers, at 100% fan speeds, 2d clock idle temp was 63c... yikes. At 3d clocks/voltage (without even running a 3d program), the temp was idling at 83c. I took off the side of my case with the AC blowing into my computer and the idle temp was 77c.... Did I not use enough ceramique? Why are my temps so high? I thought maybe I would have slighter higher case temp (which went up about 4c, but that's okay), but 20c+ RAISE in temperatures? I am thinking I did something wrong.. but I did everything extremely carefully, made sure the pads were all on correctly, that I applied enough ceramique without too much or too little, made sure the heatsink was firmly on the pads and the chip... but it seems like I am not getting contact.

The temperature is actually low on one of the cards..., almost what I expected. 50c idle at 3d speeds. Did I just not get contact on my Crossfire card (the one with the high temps?) I guess I have to take everything back out again and look. Blah.

 

[darkcow]

maybe one of the fans isn't getting enough air and its sucking the hot air from the card below it. i dunno. try reseating it. it can't hurt.

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

The Accelero X2's haven't been to kind to the X1900s from what I've read around here and hardocp. They do okay in some circumstances, given that your case has some really good airflow, but otherwise they're no better than the stock cooler.

 

[vixro]

I figured out the problem. The slave card was mounted properly, but the crossfire card I did something different. I used one of the pads from the old HIS cooler because the crossfire card used 9, instead of 8. The extra pad, was about 1/2 mm taller than the other pads, which caused the heatsink to be seated at an angle (you could see it barely when you look at it from below.

Unfortunately, the pads were practically glued to the card and I had to use a filet knife (cutco rocks), to remove the pads and remove the heatsink. in the process I damaged the pads (duh), and was unable to reuse them. because of this I threw the accelero in the trash and reinstalled the old cooler using ceramique and some cleaner. Although I am unhappy that I went 1 for 2 out of the coolers, at least I have some silence...

Just a warning for all people planning to use the Accelero's, if you use the pads included, you WILL NOT be able to remove the heatsink without either damaging the pads, or your card itself to remove them. Make sure you seat everything correctly the first time, or choose a different cooler. At least you can all learn from my mistake.


edit: this is depressing. I am watching my temps and comparing them with ATI tool while adjusting fan speeds and I am at 76c on the HIS cooler card and 100% fan speed with 3dview open and 49c on the Accelero card. Bleh, didn't think the temp difference would be that good. Sigh, I hate my crossfire master card!!! ( I think it's sucking the hot air from the Slave card below it )

 

[UglyChild]

Dude, get your self a pair of Zalman VF900 Coolers.

 

[vixro]

Earlier reviewed on this site in a different thread, the VF900's won't work in crossfire because they are too large.

 

[UglyChild]

Im not sure about that. Accelero is not all that small either.

But in this thread, VF900 is worse then a stock cooler. http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=4412244#post4412244


By looking at this pic, we can see that Accelero is much larger then vf900

And in this pic we have Accelero and VF900 on SLI system. And we can see clearly that Accelero is bigger then vf900.

 

[vixro]

Accelero was a horrible choice. it cooled down the GPU fine, exactly what I wanted it to do, but it heats up everything else. It's bad in a crossfire setup because 1 card will be a good temp, and then the other card will suck in all the extra heat. I found that I hadn't really seated my other card wrong, it just wasn't going to work next to another card. The only way for crossfire to run correctly is to have extra cooling on the setup, or the air exhausted through the back.

Tomorrow I am going to remove the other X2 and put the stock cooler back on. I hate the noise, but I'm sorry to say that they cool a lot better by exhausting the air out back.

*braces himself for the 1 hour of "fileting" the thermal pads off of the ram chips.

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

Do crossfire setups sit closer together than SLI setups do? They must if the VF900s won't work for a crossfire setup....

 

[UglyChild]

Do crossfire setups sit closer together than SLI setups do? They must if the VF900s won't work for a crossfire setup....

Depends on the mother board and how far apart PCI-E slots are.

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

Your board should have more than enough clearance for VF900s. I run VF900s on my 7800GTs on my ASUS A8N-SLI, which has the same distance between the slots as your board does.

 

[vixro]

Ah, I was confused and was referring to the V1, not the VF900. I was under the impression the VF900's would not work because they are small and only cover the GPU. The memory chips would have no cover for cooling whatsoever which is important on these cards.

 

[TTP]

That's my pic of X2's mounted in crossfire configuration posted above. My hottest temp is ~72C after a few hours of Oblivion or Titan Quest. The normal idle is ~40C. Just make sure your case is vented thoroughly.

IMO, aside from the noise @100% speed, the stock cooler is pretty good. But the AC X2 are the best air cooling option a crossfire setup for the near future.

 

[vixro]

I was getting 86c+ after a few *minutes* of 3dplay. I just have 1 120m intake and 1 120mm exhaust on the case though (other than the intake 120mm fan on the PSU). I couldn't find a place to fit another fan on the bottom of the case (TT armor) and didn't know if it were possible to cut a hole in the window of the case (let alone, if it would even help.)

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

Do the memory modules get THAT hot on the 1900s??!!? The VF900s come with eight blue ramsinks with sticky back thermal pads.

 

[hkcadcam]

I suggest if you would play in cross fire mode, than you should buy a 2 slots space mainboard like Gigabyte, DFI and Asus etc.

Then you will have more space for air intake to the VF900Cu or AcceleroX2

 

[flamerail]

That case looks crammed... maybe try running caseless for a test?

 

[vixro]

I suggest if you would play in cross fire mode, than you should buy a 2 slots space mainboard like Gigabyte, DFI and Asus etc.

Then you will have more space for air intake to the VF900Cu or AcceleroX2

I have an Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe, there was space, it wasn't too crammed. if I really wanted to I might have been able to even use the PCI slot between the two cards (lol).

 

[tommcd64]

I have gotten great results with the accelero x2 but poor results with the vf900.

 

[Rattle]

stock cooler is still the best cooler for x1900