Chris Ihao

Honey, I just got a new GTX280 cooler (Gtx260 June UPDATE)





First of all. The backplate and two 3x ram heatsinks' adhesive on the Accelero Xtreme 280 is rubbish. RUBBISH! Literarily. You are supposed to use an eraser on the ram chips after having carefully cleaned them, to get the hs's and backplate to stick. What kind of bs is that Arctic Cooling? Oh, and btw it doesnt work.

Update 26/4: In all fairness, this eraser business not working for me could be due to the type of eraser I used. I used one of those "softy soft" erasers. Maybe these are full of oil or whatever. Perhaps the classical "red and blue erasers" work better, but I cant really test this anymore so... I still dont like the concept however. I would rather have no foreign material between the heatsinks and the chips, short of thermal pads or other kinds of thermal compound.


(You can see the backplate down at the bottom)


I glued the two upside down hanging hs's with arctic silver epoxy adhesive (though it takes quite a lot to work to get off the existing so called "adhesive"). Problem fixed.


(I wouldn't really recommend doing it the way its done in this pic though)


The backplate did of course not stick either, and it was a bit bent when I got it, causing some of the ram chips to lose contact with the plate. I tried to bend it in straight shape, but as anyone who has tried to bend a metal plate completely straight knows; its bloody difficult! Suprisingly enough they didnt artifact when oc'ing to 1330, but this is really not the way I want to go. The backplate I eventually just temporarily laid down on top of the card with some arctic silver splashed onto each ram chip. It sure beats the ridiculous "thermal pads" that has absolutely no glue effect on the chips, like with the other two hs's. Going to permanently stick on some single hs's for each chip, when I get my hands on some.


(Zalman ZM-RHS1 VGA RAM Heatsinks)


All is forgiven because it really really cools the card down. I'm usually maxing out at 51-52c core temp @ 729/1458/1332 during heavy gaming, while furmark can crawl up towards 60c in a hot room. My stock cooler went up to 80c non-overclocked and made my heavier games crash all the time at stock fan speeds, forcing me to raise it to +90%, hence the investement of this thing. The other cooling sinks seem to have better solutions, especially the core part. The pcb tempereature now reaches about 50c, while it got to 57.5c on stock cooling.

Sound wise, the tri-fan solution really is much more silent @ 96% than the stock fan ever was. I was sceptical seeing the three fans, but there is absolutely no reason to get all worked up about that. No annoying "wheee" will bother you again.


(Cooool)


Please get a) some adhesive, b) some proper ram cooling and c) some white spirits (for third grade adhesive) before getting this cooler, as it comes at a price in more than one sense (Also, look at vrm update down below).

All in all I am very happy with this cooler, even if it has required much more work and hassle than I expected, and hoped for to be honest. This is my third Arctic Cooling gpu cooler. I just hope they get their shortcomings straightened up until next time i'm in for a new gpu cooler, or I may very well be looking for alternatives at that time.

Thanks for listening! Chris

Rather important update:

The vrm sink has NO effect on temperatures. I have suspected this from the day I first checked the vrm temps. Due to the rather thick and hard thermal pads used for the hs, I believe it in fact has an insulating effect on the vrm's by a few degrees. This has been tested over several days, accumulating in me testing without the hs today. Its exactly the same or maybe even a bit better than with the AC vrm hs on.

This should, for some, be yet another nail in the coffin for this package. I mean, having paid as much as I did for this thing, I would expect more from Arctic Cooling.

Happy happy joy joy update:

I did end up with cutting off the original stock cooler's vrm sink and glued it on with epoxy. The results are so far good. Thanks to WaLshy11 who pointed out this great "mini review", containing a lot of instructions and pictures I needed to feel comfortable about this operation: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...84#post1282484. Obviously it voids the warranty, but I really dont care having used glue for most parts anyways.

Latest results: More than 20 degrees celcius decrease in vrm temps after this mod. I feel good


Gtx260 owners: Be sure to check out this thread before buying: http://www.overclock.net/nvidia-cool...eme-gtx-2.html. This will probably be of assistance when deciding on buying or not, depending on what make you have of the 260. For the newer model, only the Main cooler and Avivo2 cooler seem to be used, based upon what is written in this updated installation manual: http://www.arctic-cooling.com/downlo...stallation.pdf

Attached Thumbnails

   

bluedevil

I can't seem to find this at all. I want to get a good cooler for my 260.......

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Chris Ihao

Spacegoast, who also seem to want this cooler, contacted Arctic Cooling and asked when its going to be released in the US. They told him late april.

Also, be sure to check if you have a reference pcb for your 260, or the parts wont fit properly.

hi7of3of2hi9

Nice little review..+rep~
I was thinking getting a aftermarket cooler for my 280...(thermalrite GTX something..)
So how's the VRM temps? Are they lowered or actually higher?

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Chris Ihao

I have no way of measuring the vrm's, but I CAN tell you that the pcb now maxes out at around 50c. Having looked through some old logs, I see it used to max out at 57.5c

Anth0789

Not out yet thats why, April they say it will be out...

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bluedevil

Bah....everywhere I seen it, it says it was released March 18th or around there. I think I may look into WCing my 260......

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spacegoast

Nice review Chris . Ya I was told it will be in the USA in late April with an MSRP of $61.99.Hopefully Arctic Cooling will fix these problems you and some others have pointed out by the time it is released over here.

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Chris Ihao

I ended up ordering these Zalman memory hs's: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=vga_ram.

Should do just fine for my use, having 4 higher and 4 lower ones for versatileness (I have a pci card and ram right above the gtx280).

10acjed

+rep for saving me the headache...

Its why I love this site, I read the reviews and they dont mention any issues.

So HR-03 + Yate Med here I come....

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