Arctic Accelero Xtreme 2900 VGA cooler review -
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The cooler is heatpipe based and actually has five heatpipes (look above). When you look closely at the the cooler you'll see copper pipes and aluminum cooling ribbons. An internal coolant is inside these pipes (air/gas/fluid) and flows from the chamber upwards towards the cooling ribbons where heat will be dissipated with the help of airflow. The cooling method is all based around circulation. Although we just named it gas the coolant can be something else or actually change into a gas. Usually it is liquid when cold but easily becomes a vapor when heated and vice versa. We're not sure what the coolant is used in the Xtreme though.
As heat is absorbed from the processor (GPU), it will follow the path of least resistance to the aluminum fins where the heat then dissipates
So the cooler is constructed with a copper base, which has the aluminum heatsink sitting on top of it, and at the base has 5 heat pipes connected to it. Connected to the heatpipes are thin aluminum fins. The main fins, the ones that are doing the real work, are only connected to the base by the heat pipes.
Right, let's get started shall we ?
Our guinea pig for today .. the Radeon 2900 XT. Let's tear it apart ! (gently)
We start at the backside where we remove the black backplate so we can access the screws that mount the VGA cooler.
Then we remove four screws from the GPU area .. and all the way in front above the DVI connector you'll see two more screws. Remove these as well.
Arctic (a german manufacturer) these days is mainly recognizable from their Liquid Freezer II, which we reviewed as a 280 non-RGB version, 240 ARGB, and 360 ARGB. Still, today, we are examining two air coolers from the Arctic: an A35/I35 A-RGB. Why two in one review? That’s mainly because each is dedicated to the CPU from a different producer. A35 is aimed at the AM5/AM4 platform, and the i35 is for Intel’s 1700, 1200, 1155, 1151, and 1150 sockets.
Arctic Accelero Hybrid 7970 Liquid Cooling System review
We review the Arctic Accelero Hybrid 7970 Liquid Cooling System. A great performing Hybrid cooling solution.
Arctic Accelero Xtreme 2900 VGA cooler review
The Accelero Xtreme features with 5 heatpipes, 107 fins and 3 power managed fans. The design has been improved for optimized air flow design obviously to cool effectively, which according to Arctic is up to 240 Watt heat dissipation; that's quite a lot. They claim to can dramatically bring down the heat from GPU at least 20ºC lower than the stock cooler. Well .. let's slap a Radeon 2900 XT on it and see how well it does the job then.