Accelero Xtreme 4870 X2 review | test - Introduction

It's a not a secret that only a handful of companies out there in the land of anything cooling related always bring top notch cooling products to the market. Arctic Cooling is one of them. Initially they started with thermal paste, then designed some wicked fans and from there on all kinds of cooling solutions. These days Arctic Cooling offers CPU coolers, VGA coolers, case fans, Silent PC cases, silent power supplies and of course their renowned thermal paste series.

Recently one of the more interesting product released in their VGA cooler lineup is the all new Accelero XTREME 4780X2 cooler. It is a massive eight heatpipe based cooler that might be as big as a whale, yet is virtually silent and has extraordinary cooling performance.

And if you plan to design a dual-GPU based Radeon HD 4870 X2 cooler .. as a company you better know what you are doing as you do not have to face the challenge of cooling not just one GPU, no, two GPUs. The 4870 X2 series has been a real challenge ever since the beginning, as that card runs hot very hot, both GPUs with reference cooler can peak towards 85~90 Degrees C when fully utilized, with idle temperatures of roughly 60~65 Degrees C.

It certainly is a lot. Therefore a  lot of end-users opted the 4870 X2 mounted with 3rd party coolers or even installed a nice copper based water-block on the X2 and started to liquid cool it.

This is where the Accelero XTREME 4780X2 cooler comes in. If you are gutsy enough to strip down the X2 and mount a this cooler, then you can achieve temperatures that are roughly 30 degrees lower than I've just mentioned, right out of the box.

The downside, break your card and you are screwed, you lost warranty. And believe me when I say it can happen ... as it did happen to us. More on that later though. None the less, being Guru3D, with a second card and second installation round everything worked flawless. Sheer cooling power in an absolutely noiseless environment.

Over the next few pages we'll startup a large photo-session where we'll guide you through the product, its installation and then of course temperature and sound-pressure measurements. Have a peek at the Radeon HD 4870 X2 who just had a majestic makeover as it is mounted with a Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 4780X2 cooler. Next page please.