The new video card heatsink from Arctic Cooling boasts a long name, but has performance to match.
The Arctic Cooling Accelero TWIN TURBO Pro is not the first heatsink we've ever looked at that has a ridiculous name, but in all honesty, it's a little bit... long. While it's admirable that they thought to describe it in detail, it doesn't actually tell you what it does - throw this on a graphics card, and presto-change-o, you've got a better cooler. Or do you?
At first glance the TT Pro looks pretty serious; with two large frameless 92mm fans, four very visible copper heatpipes, and a whole mess of aluminium fins. The fans are powered by a 4-pin PWM cable that plugs into the card's PCB, or it can be powered by an included molex adapter. Strangely while the fans have four cables, the PWM reporting is a little batshit crazy - reporting fanspeeds ranging from 4000rpm, all the way to 869,418rpm! It does ramp up and down as normal and is controllable via software, but not via PWM.
Installation was relatively complex, with the first step being removal of the stock heatsink, the cleaning of the memory chips and core (the instructions oddly recommend an eraser for the memory chips, but it didn't actually do anything helpful, just put some eraser shaving there instead!), and the addition of the heatsink. It even came with some thermal goop pre-applied! The instructions were unclear on the final steps, and we didn't use the spacers initially, but the PCB flex was pretty obvious so we went back and added them in, and all was good.
Performance is very, very good. The maximum load we recorded with the TT Pro was only barely higher than the idle temps of the reference cooler, and the sound peaked at only 49.9dBA - whisper quiet. For an asking price of $55, this is definitely worth the effort. The only downside is the three-slot width, but if you've got room to spare, it's a small price to pay.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012