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If you have recently bought a new high end video card then there is a good chance you will want to improve upon the cooling proficiency of the reference cooler. Nvidia's GTX680 ships with a decent standard cooler, but today we are ripping the reference card apart and installing the ultra high end ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid – an integrated air and liquid cooling solution. ARCTIC claim a 200% cooling performance improvement with a 9 times noise reduction. For around £130 it will certainly need to deliver the goods.
Last month we reviewed the excellent ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme II, which claimed our top award. We installed this cooler onto the Asus GTX 680 Direct CU II TOP, one of the finest graphics cards on the market and it greatly enhanced the overall cooling performance, while reducing noise levels.
When it comes to ‘all in one' cooling solutions for the mass enthusiast market, ARCTIC have been releasing proven solutions for many years.
The Accelero Hybrid is an interesting new cooler for the company, ditching the tried and tested triple fan air cooling solution. This product is a similar design concept to the array of ‘all in one' liquid coolers already available on the market for AMD and Intel processors.
The Hybrid comprises a single unit comprising a radiator, fan, pump and copper block. The main plastic shell section which mounts to the card also contains a fan, which forces cool air over the VRM's and memory.
ARCTIC don't seem to have missed a trick, but does it perform as well as it sounds?
Before we install the Accelero Hybrid, we needed to line up a ‘test subject' … so we opted for a reference card by Palit courtesy of ARIA.
They sent us a PALIT GTX 680 which features a standard board design. You can pick this up for £403.04 inc vat today.
It is worth pointing out early in the review, that the Accelero Hybrid will work perfectly with the reference GTX680 design, shown in the image directly above. The two 6 pin PCI e power plugs are ‘stacked’ above each other as shown in the image above. The Accelero Xtreme III which we reviewed in June does NOT work with this stacked power plug design.
This card is clocked at 1006mhz, with a rated core boost speed of 1,058mhz. This is the style of card that many people will want to upgrade.
A structural diagram of the Accelero Hybrid highlights the liquid flow system, flowing a traditional design implementation identical to CPU units we have tested recently. It is capable of dealing with 320watts of heat. The graphics card module weighs 363g and the Heat Exchanger Module weighs 503g.
Thats a great piece of engineering from ARCTIC. quite expensive, my last video card cost that.
I was wondering when these would come out for GPU’s. Looks like a decent bit of kit. For a little more money however, I’d go for an EK H30 Supreme 240 and an EK 680 block for even better performance and only £20 more.
You should’ve done some overclocking tests.
that was the plan, however it ended up rather dull as the overclocking headroom was limited to the gpu core on this specific card, not the cooler. And the temperature variable between reference and hybrid didn’t change. (still 30c+)
So the signature 2 by evga which is a dual fan solution stock clocked @ Core Clock: 1097MHz, Boost Clock: 1163MHz only costs $519 is a better choice in my opinion.
Hi Godrilla. absolutely, but we wanted a reference card with reference cooler this time. We used an ASUS GTX680 Direct CU II TOP for the last Accelero review and a few readers said that people aren’t likely to buy a overclocked card with enhanced cooler which costs extra, just to remove the cooler and use a third party cooling system like this.
This time we opted for a basic GTX680 to note the possible improvements from the Accelero Hybrid.
SLI ? Is this a 2 or 3 Slot sollution ?
Sli would he possible if your case can handle the two radiator positions.
Nice review, thanks guys. A very steep price though, especially when you can easily mod a CPU closed-loop cooler such as the Kuhler 620 onto a card. Much cheaper, at about £45.
Good rig, but pricey. I will look for cheaper item instead.
Will this cooler work with a GTX 680 SC with a backplate on it or will the backplate interfere with it?
Question:
Will This Work On ASUS 680 OC? [DC2O]
Some users say that Asus TOP & OC models cant use the hybrid.
Is this true?
Any clue if this would work to make a ASUS Direct CUII 2GB triple slot card fit in the two available slots on the Bitfenix Prodigy? I really want to use this cooler if it will fit in the two two slots available but I can’t seem to find any answers if there’s any overhang into a third slot. Seeing as the Prodigy doesn’t have a third slot available to overhang into this would be a potential issue. If it stays within the two slots available I’ll probably buy it for my GPU even if i have to mod the heat sinks a bit to make them fit. If someone could answer back that’d be awesome!