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- 15 Dec 2008
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This is my first ever mini forum review so please excuse any mistakes on my part.
The review is simple, we all know about AMD's 290 and 290X GPU's and how hot they run with the stock cooling.
So the aim was to reduce temperatures and noise, there's an abundance of after market air coolers but very few 'cheap' ways to water cool a GPU.
There's the old method of using an all in one CPU cooler with a custom bracket, that was at the time the most cost effective method of water cooling on the cheap for your GPU.
Arctic cooling thought that there might be a market for all in one GPU coolers and released the Accelero Hybrid, it was a good product that offered very good cooling but it had one problem, price!
It would cost you twice as much to buy an Accelero Hybrid then it would using the all in one CPU cooler method hence why no one bought the Hybrid coolers.
I made a thread around 4-5 weeks back asking if OCUK would be able to get any Hybrid coolers in on the cheap and low and behold they did!
I instantly ordered 2 of them and put them on my HD 7950's.
Then the 290 series relased with really high temperatures and people started asking if
1. The hybrid would fit the 290 and 290X
2. Actually be able to handle the heat they dump out
This is something that I aim to do in this thread as my HIS R290 that has flashed to an R290X arrived today with the intention of me trying one of my Hybrid coolers on.
Here's what I've been up too since 7pm today..
The Hybrid does come with it's own set of aluminium heat sinks, they're silver though so I ordered these black ones from OCUK at the cost of £11, you don't have to use but I wanted the heat sinks I used to be black.
I'm not going to bore you to death with pictures taking the stock cooler off but here's the card with the screws removed from the stock cooler.
In this picture I'm just test fitting the heat sinks, the very bottom heat sink closed to the PCIEX connector was not used as the cooler fouls most of the RAM chip, I used some small RAM sinks that would fit and they seem to be doing ok.
I installed the heat sinks with the pump installed on the graphics cards to aid installation, the Hybrid does come with a cardboard guard that shows you where the water block covers but getting it to line up with the screws was a pain and was much easier with the block installed as I could literally see exactly the area's the block would obscure.
Starting to glue them on one at a time, use a small pointed object like a tooth pic to apply a small blob to the VRM's, that way you don't go over the top and it makes removal a lot easier.
All glued.
Water block removed and then allowed to cure for 1 hour.
Once cured MX-4 was applied ready to attach the water block to the card, I can confirm that a copper shim IS NOT needed for the 290 or 290X.
The pump and shroud fitted onto the card, note that the big VRM on the back of the card is slightly too tall so I had to use a hobby knife just slice a bit plastic off the shroud to get it to clear it. Worked like a charm and now clears it with ease and as I had to trim the side of the shroud that faces the motherboard you can't even see it.
Fitted into my PC.
Looks good aye?
And now the results!!!
Idle with stock heat sink ( Idle on desktop )
Idle with Arctic Hybrid ( Idle on desktop )
Load with the stock heat sink ( Continuous loop of Heaven on Ultra with 8xAA )
Load with the Arctic Hybrid ( Continuous loop of Heaven on Ultra with 8xAA )
That's some drop in temperature!!
Very impressed with the drop on the VRM's too.
And this is more or less in-audiable too
The review is simple, we all know about AMD's 290 and 290X GPU's and how hot they run with the stock cooling.
So the aim was to reduce temperatures and noise, there's an abundance of after market air coolers but very few 'cheap' ways to water cool a GPU.
There's the old method of using an all in one CPU cooler with a custom bracket, that was at the time the most cost effective method of water cooling on the cheap for your GPU.
Arctic cooling thought that there might be a market for all in one GPU coolers and released the Accelero Hybrid, it was a good product that offered very good cooling but it had one problem, price!
It would cost you twice as much to buy an Accelero Hybrid then it would using the all in one CPU cooler method hence why no one bought the Hybrid coolers.
I made a thread around 4-5 weeks back asking if OCUK would be able to get any Hybrid coolers in on the cheap and low and behold they did!
I instantly ordered 2 of them and put them on my HD 7950's.
Then the 290 series relased with really high temperatures and people started asking if
1. The hybrid would fit the 290 and 290X
2. Actually be able to handle the heat they dump out
This is something that I aim to do in this thread as my HIS R290 that has flashed to an R290X arrived today with the intention of me trying one of my Hybrid coolers on.
Here's what I've been up too since 7pm today..
The Hybrid does come with it's own set of aluminium heat sinks, they're silver though so I ordered these black ones from OCUK at the cost of £11, you don't have to use but I wanted the heat sinks I used to be black.
I'm not going to bore you to death with pictures taking the stock cooler off but here's the card with the screws removed from the stock cooler.
In this picture I'm just test fitting the heat sinks, the very bottom heat sink closed to the PCIEX connector was not used as the cooler fouls most of the RAM chip, I used some small RAM sinks that would fit and they seem to be doing ok.
I installed the heat sinks with the pump installed on the graphics cards to aid installation, the Hybrid does come with a cardboard guard that shows you where the water block covers but getting it to line up with the screws was a pain and was much easier with the block installed as I could literally see exactly the area's the block would obscure.
Starting to glue them on one at a time, use a small pointed object like a tooth pic to apply a small blob to the VRM's, that way you don't go over the top and it makes removal a lot easier.
All glued.
Water block removed and then allowed to cure for 1 hour.
Once cured MX-4 was applied ready to attach the water block to the card, I can confirm that a copper shim IS NOT needed for the 290 or 290X.
The pump and shroud fitted onto the card, note that the big VRM on the back of the card is slightly too tall so I had to use a hobby knife just slice a bit plastic off the shroud to get it to clear it. Worked like a charm and now clears it with ease and as I had to trim the side of the shroud that faces the motherboard you can't even see it.
Fitted into my PC.
Looks good aye?
And now the results!!!
Idle with stock heat sink ( Idle on desktop )
Idle with Arctic Hybrid ( Idle on desktop )
Load with the stock heat sink ( Continuous loop of Heaven on Ultra with 8xAA )
Load with the Arctic Hybrid ( Continuous loop of Heaven on Ultra with 8xAA )
That's some drop in temperature!!
Very impressed with the drop on the VRM's too.
And this is more or less in-audiable too
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