Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2

Verdict:

[+] ACCELERO

Passive

[-] ACCELERATE

No graphics memory cooling so leads to lock-ups in Crysis

The Accelero S1 Rev 2 is a very large heatpipe/radiator-based passive cooler with supplementary heatsinks for RAM chips and ATI VRMs. The giant heatsink can be installed on numerous graphics cards (click here for the latest list of compatible cards), including the noisy and hot GeForce 8800 GT.

As the Accelero is passive, it needs to be pretty big, and the main heatsink protrudes 40mm beyond the edge of a standard graphics card, which could cause problems with small cases. The Accelero also tranforms any card into a dual-slot card - again, not great for tiny PCs, although it's fine for bigger systems.

TESTING

Despite being a passive cooler, the Accelero can cool a GPU far more effectively than the reference, single-slot, fan-assisted cooler of our Asus EN8800GT TOP (an aggressively pre-overclocked GeForce 8800 GT card). The latter's loud single-slot reference cooler allows the GPU to run at 95°C after one hour of full load, while the same GPU never ran hotter than 67°C with the Accelero fitted.

However, Crysis crashed after 45 minutes or so when running with the card modified, due to the graphic card's memory overheating. This is hardly a surprise, as the memory heatsinks are located between the PCB of the card and the main heatsink, which becomes very hot. Therefore, there's no chance of the memory heatsinks being able to dispose of the heat they're conducting from the DRAMs. With a slow-spinning case fan pointed at the Accelero (helping to shift heat away from the various heatsinks) we saw no such instability issues.

Installation of the Accelero is fiddly, but patience and a small Philips-head screwdriver will see you through.

CONCLUSION

Using a passive cooler such as this Accelero is only a smart move if you have airflow directed toward your graphics card, otherwise you risk frequent lock-ups.

You can buy the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2 from Special Tech for £14.38 inc VAT (price correct at time of review)

For more information on the the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2, see Arctic Cooling's website

• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games
• Zotac GeForce GTX 260² - Graphics cards
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Graphics cards