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When thinking of buying a new heatsink the first thing that comes to mind isn't
usually a new one for your video card but rather your processor. But of course
there are quite a number of people who look for the performance edge wherever
they can get it and an add on VGA cooler can be quite helpful in that respect.
Today we have one to look at from Arctic Cooling, the Accelero S1 Revision 2
cooler with Turbo Module fans.

Here are the specs.
Heat Sink: 138(L) x 215(W) x 33(H) mm
Heat pipe: 6 mm x 4
Weight: 268 g
Accessories: 2 Voltage Regulator Heat Spreaders
8 Memory Heat Sinks
Warranty: 6 Years
Application:
ATI:
Radeon HD 38xx series, 36xx series, 2600, 2400, X1950, X1900, X1800, X1650,
X1600, X1550, X1300 series
nVIDIA:
GeForce 9600 GT, 8800GTS(G92), 8800GT, 8600, 8500, 8400, 7950GT, 7900, 7800,
7600, 7300, 6800, 6600 series (except 7X00 GS AGP)
The card comes packaged in a rectangular box which is just the right size for a
card this large, meaning not unnecessarily big. Rectangular in shape it features
Call of Juarez on the box although we didn't see it in our bundle. Inside the
card is packed nicely in Styrofoam with a fairly typical hardware bundle. DVI-to-VGA
adapter, DVI-to-HDMI adapter, molex to PCI-Express power adapter, HDTV cable,
and S-video cable. No extra software bundle is included. Arctic Cooing also
included their Turbo Module coolers as well which fit easily into the Accelero.
Here are the specs on the fan.
- Dual High Performance Fans
- Enhance Cooling Performance
- Extremely Quiet
- High Reliability
- Easy Installation
- Low Weight
- Long Lifetime
- 6 Years Warranty
Installation takes a little time and patience but isn't extraordinarily hard.
With our GeForce 9600 GT video card we began by removing all the screws on the
back of the card. That is quite simple to do and afterwards the stock heatsink
comes off quite easily. You'll then want to remove the backs of all the memory
heatsink so they can affix themselves to the memory modules on the graphics
cards. After that, remove the sticky tag on the main GPU heatsink and put
the spacers on the holes to screw into. There are both "A" and "B" holes
depending on the graphics card you are using. Lining up these four holes with
the GPU is a little bit tricky but once you have it lined up you can start
screwing in the screws. If all you want is a passive heatsink at this point you
are done.

We went further though and installed the Turbo Module coolers. This is a
little bit harder and you'll need to use a flat head screwdriver to push open
the aluminum fins to stick the fans into so it clips into the fan and remains
steady. You'll hide the power cord in there as well so it doesn't get in the way
of the fans. After this attached the power cord on the fans to one matching on
your motherboard and you're ready to go.

Let's move onto testing.
Here is our current test system.
Our test OS was Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 with Nvidia's 175.12 of Forceware
drivers and ATI Catalyst 8.4.
We'll start things off with the idle temperatures as measured from GPUZ. Degrees
are measured in Celsius.
| Stock Cooler |
Accelero S1 Rev 2 with Turbo Module fans |
| 45 |
33 |
12 degrees Celsius is quite a drop and shows great potential for the Accelero S1
Rev 2. How much will this correspond to in overclocking though? We used 3DMark
2006 to test stability and RiverTuner to push the cards clock speed.
| |
GPU Overclock |
Memory Overclock |
| Stock Cooler |
805MHz |
1025MHz |
| Accelero S1 Rev 2 with Turbo Module Fans |
840MHz |
1035MHz |
Here we see a gain of 35MHz over the stock cooler
with the GPU speed and less with the memory at 10MHz. Not bad at
all though on what already was a good cooler for the GeForce
9600 GT. Here is the GPUZ screen.


Conclusion:
Overall we have to say we were quite
impressed with Arctic Cooling's Accelero S1 Revision 2 with
the Turbo Modules. The GeForce 9600 GT isn't a bad heatsink
by any means but by expanding the size (although losing a
few expansion slots) it is able to reduce temperatures
dramatically and give a better overclock. If you are looking
at switching up your VGA cooler then this is definitely one
of the best performing ones we've seen so far and one to
take a look at. The question of course is whether or not it
is worth it. With the fans it is $38 at Newegg which for the
price you could almost upgrade to the next level of graphics
card so it is something to definitely consider. And if
you're looking to keep your single slot cooler that as well
would be missing. But if heat is a problem for your card or
you're trying to push more MHz Arctic Cooling's solution is
a good one. Score: 91%
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