Verdict and Conclusion
After testing the 7970 Accelero Xtreme I must say that I am both impressed and disappointed.
Core temps were great while my system also became much more quiet. On the other hand, the lack of airflow almost killed my $550 video card and a lack of a proper manual for a long time was a huge disappointment.
If I could change a few things I would add in a tube of thermal paste instead of pre-applying a single use of paste to the heatsink.
And adding a larger amount of G1 paste that has a couple of applications worth would be great.
Adding in an instruction manual in the package would also be a priority, as well as including a few more beefy heatsinks for the VRM area.
When it comes to the price Arctic has it listed for a whopping $99.90, plus shipping. Would I ever spend that much on a heatsink? No I would not. Shopping around it can be found for $83 to your door. While this is better than $100-ish I would find it extremely hard to spend that much on an aftermarket heatsink that mostly lowers the amount of noise.
Shall we summarize? There are pros:
- Good GPU-core cooling performance
- G1 thermal glue comes off easily.
- Very quiet compared to stock
- Tons of ram and MOSFET sinks
There are cons too:
- Takes up three slots
- G1 comes off easily
- G1 can only be used once, and hard to find more of it
- Much longer than actual video card
- No manual in-package
- Cannot properly cool secondary components on high-end cards
- Expensive
Final Words
While GPU cooling is very good, the ability to properly cool secondary components is very much lacking. If you are looking to quiet down your system this is a good choice, but make sure that you have tons of airflow in your case or you will end up with a dead card sooner or later.
SCORE
6.0/10
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