6950>70 Accelero Extreme Xfire

[tommybhoy]

6950>70 Accelero Extreme Xfire

I had an AC Accelero Extreme 5870 cooler that I kept when I sold my 5870.
I had a feeling it would fit my 6950>70 that I bought to replace it and luckily it did, the only difference being the vrm heatsink wouldn't fit, I just used some Thermalright 8800gt heatsinks instead.

I eventually found another 5870 extreme from the bay (you can't get them any more, only the 'extreme' now but I saved myself about £25+) for my second 6950>70 but it wouldn't fit my P-182 due to the bottom tray.


What It was like before cutting the case:

As you can see there was no way that the new cooler was going to fit.
Out came the trusty old Dremmel and I cut a hole in the tray and used some 'Blowhole Edge Trim' which OC don't stock so I had to source from elsewhere.

Tray cut out mod of my Antec P-182 case in order for them to fit:

Please note: First Take Everything Out Your Case When Cutting As Things Will Blow Up!!!

I had to remove the bottom fan holder as well in order for the cooler to fit.

In the picture above, the mb was only in the shot in order to check that the card including cooler would fit!

I then had a proper clean up and made sure that there was no metal dust anywhere as to not blow up anything then I put everything back in.

Time to put the cooler on.

As I have already done 1 card it was quicker with this one, removed all the screws including the side ones near the video inputs as well.

I removed the tim from the core then used an eraser on the rams in order to clean any residue left from the heatpads, then I went over the memory with the eraser again to ensure that the heatsinks would stick well with some frag tape.

I then added the heatsinks, please note there is also a heatsink required to the right of the top row of memory as well this is very important as the card will burn without it. I applied some Arctic Cooling MX-3 and plugged the fan header onto the board and it was ready to assemble:

Line up the 4 holes, screw them in 2 turns each, keep going until it's nice and tight:

Extreme v stock comparisons:

All done and time to go into the case:

(I have since hooked the top card up with ninja wire and it's straight now)

As you can see, the fans protrude through the hole I cut.

A view from below:

Now for some results:

Before you take a look at the results, please note that my pc resides in a tiny cupboard under the stairs that has terrible air circulation.

The PC is used for browsing and gaming in the cupboard on a 24" 1080p Syncmaster P2450, while hooked up to the TV 37" 1080p Samsung 6 series directly through the wall for media viewing with MediaBrowser(If you use MC then you should get it!).
If the PC was sitting elsewhere I am 100% sure the temps would be much lower!

Desktop temps:

Before the second card was fitted with the cooler, the top card(extreme) idled at 36c while the stock card idled at 47c. (I forgot to take some screenies )

6950>70 Xfire Extreme temps:

Idle on auto fan(CCC auto settings):

Heaven max temps on auto fan(CCC auto settings) (used the wrong Gpu-z for one of these):

Heaven max temps on fan @70% (CCC fan @70%):

Please note that for some unknown reason gpu-z was reporting the wrong rpm's on both gpu's as the rpms only go up to 2000 rpms.

Heaven max temps on max @100%(CCC fan @100%), all case fans at 100% as well:

Please note that It's warmer here today than when tests were carried out yesterday.

Gpu-z now working as it should on the 100% fan setting with correct results.

Overall I'm quite happy with the temperature results, although the top cards temps have risen under load from when the stock cooler was being used.
I put this down to all the hot air being dumped inside the case where as before, the bottom card must have been dumping some of the air from the extreme out the back too.

Noise levels on the other hand are absolutely fantastic, which after all was my main aim anyway, on auto they are non existent.

I can now switch off all my case fans when browsing as I also fitted a Nesteq FanMax controller as well that lets you completly switch fans off, and my psu fan does not spin up at all unless I game, this coupled with the extremes is now utter bliss when browsing


Special thanks goes out to Tealc who told me to cut the lower tray and take some pics.

A very, very special thanks goes out to my son Alessandro aged 6 last Friday who let me use his Ben 10 eraser, without it my heatsinks would have fell off.

 

[Tealc]

Awesome mod. Who says multi graphics cards have to be noisy.

 

[tommybhoy]

Awesome mod. Who says multi graphics cards have to be noisy.

Thanks mate, cutting that tray was a nightmare, some of the toughened cut off wheels lasted about 2cm, it took longer to change the wheels than actually cut the tray!
Well worth it in the end though, I can't stress enough how quiet my rig is now.

 

[Tealc]

Antec do build some quality cases and those panels are mighty thick. I don't remember telling you to cut the bottom tray but meh it was a good idea nonetheless.

Do either of those coolers report accurate fan speeds though? The figures look completely wrong.

Quite a small difference between auto setting and 70% there bud, seems hardly worth bothering to set the fan so fast. I suppose this just goes to show that the effectiveness of that particular heatsink is good with just the low airflow.

A bit wierd that it says 5870 isn't it.

 

[tommybhoy]

Antec do build some quality cases and those panels are mighty thick. I don't remember telling you to cut the bottom tray but meh it was a good idea nonetheless.

I think you'd be fine to remove the material from the divider. The rest of the case is pretty sturdy. You'd need to cut a fair chunk of it though as the extremes are pretty long and would go beyond the drive bays

Did you forget?
Agree with you on the build quality, they are very tough indeed.

Do either of those coolers report accurate fan speeds though? The figures look completely wrong.

Just noticed that gpu 1 is completely off the mark, It's back to normal reporting the same speeds as gpu 2 now.

Quite a small difference between auto setting and 70% there bud, seems hardly worth bothering to set the fan so fast. I suppose this just goes to show that the effectiveness of that particular heatsink is good with just the low airflow.

It gets better results if the case fans are turned up full but the PC sounds like a wind tunnel. I hate noise and it does a good enough job keeping temps decent as it is.

The fan is much more effective at higher speeds when in a single gpu configuration, I guess it's the trade off of temps in xfire.

A bit wierd that it says 5870 isn't it.

I'll maybe get myself some 6950>70 stickers to cover the 5870, but the case is always closed so it doesn't bother me much.

 

[tommybhoy]

Added 100% fan speeds in CCC and increased all case fans to 100% as well(in all other tests they were set quite low, I forgot about them).
3 Akasa Apache, 1 intake on the top HD bay, 1 on a lapped Thermalright 120 Extreme, and the last as a rear exhaust. 1 Thermalright TY-140 FAN 140mm on the roof.

Far too noisy for me though, but it shows what the cooler can do when at 100% and maximum airflow through my case.

 

[tommybhoy]

Quick update, although not much interest in the thread so far at all.

Crysis 2 1 hour play time max temps, Gpu @ 900 MHz + 1350 MHz:

 

[trigger-happy]

Very nice! I had a word with the mods about why they are not selling it in ocuk and they had replied:

After looking at these and discussing with Arctic the cooler is not something we are stocking.

Basically you buy the heatsink and thats fine, however the VRM kits must be ordered seperately for which card you want to fit it to. The problem is the life of the glue on the kits is 4 weeks, as the glue dries out and the VRMs won't stick on, or will fall off after a short time. Due to this currently I don't plan to stock these as I don't want customers to order and the glue is gone "off" to cause them to blow up their GPU.

Arctic are planning develop something with a longer life span and then maybe we will start to stock them then.

I need to wait for awhile until the new glue formula comes out.

 

[Tealc]

This glue and it going off was the main reason I didn't get one. If the Cooler came with a selection of common heatsinks and some decent thermal tape then I may have gone Arctic over Thermalright.

Still I am almost envious of those temperatures which seem pretty decent considering the clock speed and the fact that two GPUs are thundering away in a case.

I think graphics cards need to start coming without their pathetic excuses for leaf blower coolers so that we can add a decent cooler without messing with warranties. We have been fitting CPU coolers for years but still GPUs are left to the coolers of the manufacturers.

 

[Avathar77]

Very nice!
I am wondering why I should/shouldn't put my card under water with these temps and noise with air as well.

 

[tommybhoy]

I need to wait for awhile until the new glue formula comes out.

http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?...l&type=Accessories&type_sub=Thermal Interface

I used the Akasa thermal tape on both cards heat sinks as I had already used my cooler on my old 5870 previous to the 6950, 4 months later the ram heat sinks are still stuck on solid. Should the card need an rma, there would be much less of a chance of noticing that there was a different cooler on it because no glue would have been used.
It puzzles me why AC are now using glue instead of frag tape, especially as the frag tape used on the 5870 extreme ram sinks was vastly improved and they were stuck on rock solid, it's that good the original AC frag tape is still on one of the ram heat sinks being re-used a second time!
AC took a lot of flack for the frag tape used on previous AC coolers like the Twin Turbo which I have also used where the ram sinks would fall off quite easily.

Still I am almost envious of those temperatures which seem pretty decent considering the clock speed and the fact that two GPUs are thundering away in a case.

Thanks, I've been busy with work and not had much free time for the last 2 weeks, so I will be trying higher clocks and post the results too.

I think graphics cards need to start coming without their pathetic excuses for leaf blower coolers so that we can add a decent cooler without messing with warranties. We have been fitting CPU coolers for years but still GPUs are left to the coolers of the manufacturers.

Agree 100% with you there, why don't they sell gpu's with no coolers at all, reduced prices and then more thermal companies would be releasing coolers too.
It really is pathetic that the warranty becomes void when removing the cooler!
I mean if you break a cap or something then you wouldn't rma it as they would know straight away you broke it.

Very nice!
I am wondering why I should/shouldn't put my card under water with these temps and noise with air as well.

Is the rest of your rig under water?

 

[Avathar77]

Its just my cpu at the moment, have got another 240mm rad and shifting between full cover and core only water blocks at the moment. I heard from another member that AC twin turbo can be fitted to HD6970 as well so waiting on some pics, as I already have one of them doing nothing.

 

[sja360]

surely if we're buying aftermarket coolers we will be pretty capable of buying some thermal adhesive? i mean if ocuk stocked it and informed customers the adhesive wont be included i doubt it would limit sales because of this.

 

[trigger-happy]

is it me or do those coolers make the graphics card look slanted? It looks like its bending downwards, get a graphics card bracket?

 

[tommybhoy]

Its just my cpu at the moment, have got another 240mm rad and shifting between full cover and core only water blocks at the moment. I heard from another member that AC twin turbo can be fitted to HD6970 as well so waiting on some pics, as I already have one of them doing nothing.

The twin turbo is a wee bit noisier than the extreme imo, it has a low pitched hum to it that annoyed the hell out of me, but I'm guessing you have already used it before.

surely if we're buying aftermarket coolers we will be pretty capable of buying some thermal adhesive? i mean if ocuk stocked it and informed customers the adhesive wont be included i doubt it would limit sales because of this.

I know, after all they only need to add the price of akasa thermal tape onto the price and advertise it as a bundle. Surely that wouldn't be too hard to do as the tape is only a couple of quid, it won't bump the price up that much.

is it me or do those coolers make the graphics card look slanted? It looks like its bending downwards, get a graphics card bracket?

If you notice there is an x-fi above the top card that has an ide cable running to the breakout box in a drive bay that pushes the card down a bit. There is scythe ninja wire to the right of the top card that hadn't been fastened up at the time, it holds the card level(I still had to do some cable tidying when I took the pick).

 

[tommybhoy]

Another update, Witcher 2, 1 hr play through temps(Only CPU fan On, NO case fans on):

Xfire caps are needed in this game as average gpu usage is only 49%.

 

[Andy_1995]

nice setup, wish i had one like it lol.

 

[tommybhoy]

Thanks very much Andy!

 

[BaDBoY_uK]

Nice mod. Why didn't you just buy a new case?

I love those coolers though.

 

[gwobbles]

wow temps arent that bad at all! Think ill be investing into new PSU and 580 during xmas