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AMD's HD6990 is a powerhouse of a graphics card. Sadly the AMD development team felt that using a tiny, high spinning fan was a good idea, and the product has been marred with irritating noise emissions since it launched. Until AMD step up their game with a good ‘reference' cooling system, it comes down to third party companies to fix the situation.
The Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 has rectified the problem and should sell well between now and the New Year. It may cost $150, but if you can afford the HD6990 in the first place then there is a good possibility that this won't bother you too much.
Since our ‘world first' review of the Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 earlier this week our readers have been asking me if it was possible to improve the product even further. While I could have opted for a performance Delta Fan cooled solution to drop temperatures even further, we would be back at square one with high noise emissions.
I decided to use two of the Xigmatek XAF F1451/F1452 fans which cost around £15 each in the United Kingdom. I wasn't sure initially if the Accelero cooler could house such large fans normally used for chassis cooling, but as testing has shown it is possible to mount two 140mm fans without a problem. If we spent time we could create something more substantial (and more attractive) for the mounting system. That said, for the purposes of this article, it held in place just fine.
With this modified cooler, the HD6990 was idling at 30c, only 6c above room temperature and when gaming it was registering 58c … much better than the 84c+ from the reference cooler.
While we like the Arctic Cooling 120mm fans, there is certainly further room for improvement if you are willing to make a little effort in changing the fans and creating a custom mounting system. We lowered noise emissions to the limits of our testing equipment while improving the performance.
We love this modified HD6990, it is not only faster than any other graphics card in our labs, but it is now quieter.
Was it worth the time and effort? Let us know.
Very very nice indeed, great idea ! the card would end up costing more than my system but what the hell.
£560 for card, £100 for cooler and £30 for fans.
It should be possible to create bracket system to fit under the cooler and underneath the heatpipes. would be a ton of effort however. Shame arctic didnt make the shroud system detachable, rather than make it part of the fans.
[quote]Several months ago we would have considered this to be impossible, but by using the Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 we hope to achieve this goal today.[/quote]
I think you meant ” we wouldn’t have considered this to be possible”.
Good read, i’m glad you actually did this and you also proved this cooler can be modified. Actually i’m surprised how good the initial fans were. Good job!
Great idea and very interesting. I love to read about cooling and constantly try to improve my systems with better fans and other tweaks.
Its cool to see that the cooler can take 140mm fans, as there are tons of options out there for modifying.
Very nice indeed. good idea, but it would scare me.
I love the fact that you even did this though I think looking at those Gaming DB differences I could settle for 29.5. I expect my speakers or headset will drown that out easily.
Anyone know if you can get the AC cooler anywhere in the UK or even Europe (apart from auction website cia US)?
Hi JamesM, a lot of people have been asking this, sadly it seems very hard to find. ill have a chat with Arctic Cooling this week.
@Zaron, would be really grateful. thanks!
Hey Zardon, great write-up! I actually ended up getting the exact setup since I was impressed by the numbers you had. Runs quite and cool, couldn’t be happier. This is the only real article covering this cooler but was as informative as I needed.
One question for you, when I installed the card in my case [600t], the card is drooping from all of the weight on the far end. I’m trying to come up with a way to compensate and get support on that end but am having trouble coming up with a solution that isn’t ghetto-rigged. Any ideas [assuming you ran into same issue]?
Josh, you actually make a very good point. After the mod, the card is very heavy and it does put quite a strain on the slot, even screwed into the case. I can’t think of many ‘official’ ways of supporting the card on the far side as you say, although I did notice that HIS bundle a ‘weight lifter’ product with their HD6950 ICEQ card which you can see here http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/his-radeon-hd-6950-iceq-x-plus-edition-review/2/
Not sure if you can buy these separately, but it would help.