I have to have my main system as silent as possible, I’ve found that it’s fairly easy to make everything in my system virtually silent except the video cards. Yes there are many options out there to replace the stock cooling but they involve fans, and to get optimum cooling on those hot VGA cards, you need to turn them to full speed and still add noise to your system. Today for review I think I have found the perfect VGA cooler, that is truly silent, it has no fans, and has excellent cooling performance. The product is the Accelero S1 VGA cooler from our friends at Arctic Cooling, so read on to learn about one of the best VGA coolers out there today…

Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 VGA Cooler

Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos

Sponsor: Arctic Cooling

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 VGA Cooler

Radically new passive 4 heatpipes cooling solution for high performance graphics

To provide passive cooling for high-end graphic cards, Accelero S1 is a high performance passive cooler featuring 4 heatpipes connected with extra large surface area. It effectively removes a great deal of heat from the graphic cards keeping the components cool. Thanks to the elegant design, Accelero S1 outperforms some active cooling solutions. Accelero S1 creates a true industry leading zero noise cooling solution for all enthusiast gamers.

Noiseless Cooling

-4 Heat Pipes

-Special Heat Spreader for Voltage Regulator Cooling

-Memory Cooling

-High Reliability

-Low Weight

-6 Years Warranty

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Application:

ATI:

 X1950, X1900, X1800 series

nVIDIA:

 GeForce 7950, 7900, 7800, 6800 series (except 7X00 GS AGP)

Please check your card with the height restriction drawing to assure compatibility.

Recommended Retail Price (excl. VAT): 29 USD / 24 EUR

Specs:

Heat Sink: 140(L) x 215(W) x 32(H) mm

Heat pipe: 6 mm x 4

Weight: 290 g

Accessories: 2 Voltage Regulator Heat Spreaders

 8 Memory Heat Sinks

Warranty: 6 Years

The cold air is drawn from outside to cool the fins directly:

The fins design optimize for air ventilation that enhance cooling performance:

Accelero S1 features 4 thick copper heatpipes which connect directly from the GPU core. The heatpipes with sintered powder wicks provide ultimate heat conductivity. Heat from the GPU is rapidly dissipated through 32 fins that extend beyond the height of the graphic card. Optimized fin design allows better air flow thus removing the heat more effectively. Together with the bundled RAM heat sinks and voltage regulator heat spreader, Accelero S1 provides an all-round passive solution that achieves the best cooling performance.

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Never compromised on noise

Install and forget about it No moving parts means it is maintenance free. An extra pair of mounting clips provides extensive protection to the graphic card that prevents damage from improper handling. With the help of the new mounting design, Accelero S1 is widely compatible with high end ATI and nVIDIA graphic cards.

Additional Information:

Noise Level

The noise level is measured in Sone (loudness) instead of dB (sound intensity).

The loudness depends upon ears response curves and tells you exactly, how bothering a certain noise is.

Thermal Compound

We ship our coolers with the ARCTIC MX-1 thermal compound. This compound hardens during the first 200h while the performance improves steadily. With heating up the paste / heatsink the process can be shortened. The performance is even from the beginning good enough to cool your CPU reliable.

A Better Look at Things

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All of the Arctic Cooling products I have seen have the same black and white theme which works very well, the Accelero S1 is no different, though it comes in a plastic clamshell that is easy to open.

Through the back of the package we can see the various parts and of course a list of specs and features as well.

Opening the package we can get a good look at the various parts, for my review today I’ll be using my Connect3d X1800GTO video card, so all the parts won’t be used you see in the picture. Arctic Cooling included extra parts for compatibility purposes and if you upgrade you can take the Accelero S1 with you.

Included are ram heatsinks, and heatinks for the voltage regulators as well, there are two types of regulator coolers, a long thin one and a sort of ‘L’ shaped flat style.

A Better Look at Things

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The Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 is massive, I mean it’s huge, but it has to be, as there are no fans to help the cooling process. We’ll see in the next section, once it’s installed on my X1800GTO just how big it is, my X1800GTO is a big card as well… The Accelero S1 is actually very cool to look at, it features tons of nice shiny cooling fins with copper heatpipes running through them and each fin is actually soldered to the pipes to insure optimum heat transfer and cooling performance.

The front and back have plastic accents, the front has the Accelero S1 label with the Arctic Cooling logo.

The actual heatsink of the Accelero S1 comes pre-applied with Arctic Cooling MX-1 thermal compound, it comes packaged with a protective plastic covering to protect the base and the thermal compound during shipping.

Once we remove the plastic cover, right before we are ready to install the Accelero S1, we can get a good look at the base and how it’s made. It’s nicely made, with quite a bit of soldering shown actually, I kinda like the look of the base and seeing the soldering that way.

Installation, Testing and Comparison

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Obviously the first thing you need to do is remove the main stock VGA cooler, my card, a Connect3d X1800GTO is fairly large and has a fairly large and loud stock cooling solution, I’ll be happy when it’s gone… On the X1800GTO we’ll need to also remove the voltage regulator heatsink, it’s a thin red colored strip near the back of the card, that goes across the width of it.

The ram heatsinks are installed next, these are easy to install, just peel off the backing of the thermal tape and stick to your ram chips. The voltage regulator heatsink does have thermal tape, but two screws are also needed for it’s installation.

The installation of the Accelero is actually a bit tricky, in that you need to get the holes lined up just right and then you have to install the plastic supports. I found the supports to be the tricky part actually, they were a bit difficult to get installed, but once I got the first one on the second was easier. The Accelero S1 is held secure to your card with four screws and the two plastic supports.

Here’s a few pictures of the Accelero S1 installed on my card, you can see how it pretty much dwarfs my card overall:

Installation, Testing and Comparison Continued:

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Here’s a closeup of the plastic clips, they clip to the edge of your card and then between the cooling fins of the Accelero S1, the other picture is just one I threw in to show the view of the actual VGA block through the fins.

And here’s a couple pictures showing the back view of the Accelero S1 installed on the X1800GTO video card.

Finally here is the Accelero S1 installed on my card in my case, the case is a CoolerMaster Centurion RC532, mid-size ATX case. You can see from the pics that the video card itself is large and spans quite distance in my case, you can also see that the Accelero S1 sticks out quite a bit, I was concerned it might not fit in the case but it wasn’t a problem at all.

The Accelero S1 is cooled from air coming is the case through the included PCI vent, the S1 relies heavily on a case that is well ventilated and kept closed at all times. In fact Arctic Cooling sent me data sheets with the Accelero S1 pertaining to test results with the case side on and with it off. Having a well ventilated case is something that everyone should have to begin with, if you case does not have good ventilation then your whole system will suffer and the Accelero will not perform as it should.

Well that’s enough with all the pretty pictures, let’s check out the numbers and see just how good or bad the Accelero S1 is at cooling this massive card.

My system is setup with two main 120MM fans, one in the front on the bottom as an intake and one set as an exhaust on the rear of the case, of course my PSU also has a fan as well to help cooling, and the Akasa EVO CPU cooler I have installed has a 120MM fan that moves the air around as well. The CoolerMaster Centurion RC532 has screen bay covers that feature sponge filters in all of them, I have all the sponges removed, I’ve found that it helps cooling quite a bit and promotes better overall air circulation in my case.

Ambient room temperature was 25C during testing, I ran both 3dMark05 and 3dMark06 back to back to insure load and maximum temperature was achieved on the card. Tests were run everyday for ten days and then the results averaged out, I used ATI Control Center temperature monitoring tool to monitor the temperature of the GPU core.

As you can see from the graph the Accelero S1 at load was the same temp as the Connect3d Stock cooler at Idle, very nice temperatures indeed. Of course we can see the six degree drop while idle as well, and we have a difference of eleven degrees cooler between the Stock cooler and the Accelero S1.

To achieve the stock temps at load of course the fan has to kick on high speed which is annoyingly loud, and even at idle the stock coolers fan was audible.

The Accelero S1 was silent the entire time at idle and load, now that’s nice!

Summary:

Silence and excellent performance in a VGA cooling solution is something to strive for, and Arctic Cooling has achieved just that. The Accelero S1 VGA cooler is something that should be admired by the other cooling companies out there, they should take notice and maybe take a few tips from Arctic Cooling in the design department. AC has achieved something great in the Accelero S1, a perfect combination of performance and silence.

DragonSteelMods gives the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 VGA Cooler a 5 out of 5 score and our Editor’s Choice Award

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Pros:

-Silent

-Excellent cooling performance

-Easy installation

-Looks cool

Cons:

-Huge

I would like to thank Arctic Cooling for the chance to review the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 and for their continued support of DSM.