Arctic Cooling Accelero X1 Graphics Card Cooler |
Arctic Cooling evidently took a different approach when it came to their new Accelero series. They redesigned the shroud, restricted use of copper to only a small part of the heatsink base and added three heatpipes. On paper, the new Accelero series certainly does not look formidable. Most of the changes appear to have weight and cost reduction, rather than performance improvement, in mind. Of course, the use of heatpipes may provide a significant boost to its performance. Its built quality was not bad at all. There were no visible machine marks on the base and they paid attention to tiny details like braiding the fan cable and pre-applying thermal paste onto the base. They also went to the extend of creating a side vent to cool the voltage regulators on the card, and mounting the fan into the plastic shroud to absorb vibration! Thanks to its simple but clearly illustrated instruction guide, installation wasn't too difficult. You just need a little patience and a screwdriver. The biggest gripe we had during the installation process actually had nothing to do with the cooler itself. It was the 3M thermal pads they provided for the memory chips! They were a real pain to install because they just refuse to stick to the memory chips. When we flipped the card over to fasten the heatsink, one of the thermal pads actually shifted out of alignment. But other than that, there's not much to dislike in this cooler. The decision to change the shroud design is most questionable, of course, as far as performance goes. But they probably did so to improve compatibility across the range of cards, even though the X1 is only meant for the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 and GeForce 7800 series of cards. Still, the Accelero X1 did well in our tests. It was no doubt the winner in every single way. No, it was not a superb cooler, but it was never meant to be one. It was designed primarily to provide adequate cooling with a much lower noise profile. Arctic Cooling's choice of fan and use of rubber insulation to reduce the vibration and noise from the fan are clear indications of their ultimate objective with this cooler. Of course, we were hoping that it would perform a little better. That would have made it the cooler for even casual overclockers. Overclocking with this cooler is really not very advisable as it can't dissipate much more heat than the stock cooler. But did we mention it is very quiet? In conclusion, the Arctic Cooling Accelero X1 is probably one of the best replacements for the stock cooler if you are looking for a quieter cooling solution. If you are a stickler about noise levels, then this is one cooler we would highly recommend! For more details, read our Comprehensive Review! |
MSRP | USD 33 EUR 28 |
Lowest PriceGrabber Price | N/A |
Review | Comprehensive Review |
Supported Graphics Cards | NVIDIA GeForce 7800 series (only PCIe) |
Overall Dimensions | 152 mm long 120 mm wide 30 mm high |
Total Weight | 262 g |
Heatsink Dimensions | 152 mm long 90 mm wide 30 mm high |
Heatsink Thermal Resistance | 0.39 °C/Watt |
Thermal Interface Material | Pre-applied MX-1 thermal paste |
Fan Dimensions | 141 mm long 120 mm wide 28 mm high |
Fan Speeds | 500 to 2000 RPM |
Fan Current Load | 0.13 A |
Fan Power Output | 1.56 W |
Fan Air Flow | 9.82 CFM 16.7 m3/h |
Fan Noise Level | 0.4 Sone |
Package Contents | One Arctic Cooling Accelero X1 graphics card cooler |
Warranty | 6 Years Limited Warranty |
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