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When AMD released the HD6990 in March it broke all performance records and seven months later is still the fastest video card on the planet. There are certainly no issues with the frame rates, but there have been plenty of concerns raised about the unpleasant noise emissions. AMD can create brilliant video cards, but until they ditch the tiny red fans they have been using for the last couple of years they haven't a hope in hell of making a great cooling solution. Their partners have been benefiting the most, by releasing a series of cards with custom cooling solutions.
The AMD HD6990 has needed a third party cooling solution now for some time and unless you fancy watercooling your system, there hasn't been a whole lot of choice. Arctic have spotted the gaping hole in the market and are due to release their Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 cooler which features a custom cooling solution with two 120mm fans and two separate racks of heat pipes across 86 aluminium fins. Impressively, it is also CrossfireX compatible, if you have deep enough pockets.
Main Features:
- Unmatched cooling performance – 400 Watts
- 2 ultra quiet 120mm PWM fans with low noise impeller
- 10 heat pipes and 86 fins for efficient heat dissipation
- RAM and voltage regulator cooling
- Crossfire Compatible.
The Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 arrives in a predominately white box with a high resolution image of the product on the front.
The rear of the box features the specifications and some of the main selling points. The 120mm fans are fluid dynamic bearing units are are controlled to spin between 400 and 1,500 rpm.
The cooler ships protected underneath a clear plastic cover. Arctic also supply enough of their MX4 thermal compound to apply to both GPU's. Additionally, there is an instruction manual and thermal pad material to apply between the card and cooler.
The dual 120mm fans certainly grab immediate attention. Underneath each fan are 5 x 6 mm copper heatpipes which run from the copper base into the racks of 86 aluminium fins which are 0.4mm each. The cooler is rated to deal with 400 watts of heat output.
Each of the copper base sections ships protected underneath a layer of plastic. These obviously will need removed before applying the thermal paste. We immediately noticed the extremely high standards of engineering, with a very smooth base on both sides of the cooler.
We grabbed the nearest HD6990 at hand, which in this case was a Sapphire card.
Removing the HD6990 reference cooler is not a difficult process. First remove two screws from the backplate section as shown above. Make sure not to misplace any of these.
Remove all the screws from the rear of the card as shown above, taking care not to damage the PCB underneath the protective cover. Arctic Cooling state it is better to remove the PCB from the cooler with the backplate in place, but it is simple either way.
The PCB should unlock from the cooler without much effort, just be careful when pulling the two apart. Then remove the fan header from the PCB. Clean the two GPU cores carefully to remove any remains of the thermal paste. It is worth pointing out that some of the thermal pads may have adhered to the PCB components rather than the cooler section, so remove these also and reapply to the reference cooler. Keep all the screws for the fitting of the Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 and store the reference cooler back in the AMD HD6990 box.
Above, the Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 cooler (left), beside the AMD reference cooler.
Be sure to remove all traces of thermal paste from the two GPU cores and any of the sticky thermal pads which may have adhered to the PCB components.
Above, apply the three 2mm spacers to the central section of the Twin Turbo 6990 cooler. These are adhesive on one side and should stick to the cooler – just be sure they are positioned exactly right for later. Don't rush this stage.
Gather all the thermal pads and start sticking them to the cooler, both sides have plastic protective covers, so be sure to remove them all.
Above, all the thermal pads adhered to the card. Next apply the supplied high grade MX4 paste evenly to both copper blocks. Arctic Cooling have supplied a perfect amount, so be careful to ensure that you balance the application.
Arctic suggest using a ruler for lining the cooler to the PCB, but we really don't understand why this would be needed. We suggest lining it up by eye and paying close attention to the central section – those 2mm spacers underneath need to be aligned perfectly for the screws later. Both GPU core sections will ‘slot' into the holes without much effort as shown above.
Lastly, reattach the protective backplate and mount it in place with all the screws. You don't need the two screws for the I/O plate anymore, but be sure to store them away in case you need to use the reference cooler again at a later date.
Above, the cooler mounted firmly in place. It is a heavy beast, adding 820 grams to the overall weight of the card.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.
Today we are testing the card in a Intel Core i7 990x system, which is CPU watercooled and running at 4.8ghz.
Test System:
Processor: Intel Core i7 990x @ 4.8ghz.
Cooler: Danger Den Watercooling.
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Black Edition.
Memory: 12GB GSKILL 2133mhz Memory.
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200W.
Hard Drives: Patriot Pyro 120GB & 2TB Samsung hard drive.
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay drive.
Graphics: Sapphire HD6990 with reference cooler and Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo 6990.
We are testing today at the higher bios setting of 880mhz. Remember that the cards won't be covered under warranty at this setting. We wanted to stress both cores as much as possible.
Room ambient was maintained at 24c throughout testing to ensure accurate results.
At idle, the reference cooler holds a temperature of around 40c. The Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 cooler drops this by 6c to 34c.
Under load, the temperatures are reduced dramatically, by 20c-23c , which is a huge difference and will help ensure maximum PCB longevity. We decided to measure ‘return to idle' temperatures, highlighting cooler performance.
The video above was taken from our launch review of the HD6990 in March, it shows how ineffective the AMD reference cooler is at dissipating heat.
A return to idle figure of 26 seconds is a class leading result for the Accelero Twin Turbo 6990. The reference cooler takes around 2 minutes to achieve the same results, running close to 20c hotter throughout the curve.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
We load the card with FurMark.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
The reference card can generate a lot of noise under load, especially when running Furmark, with the small fan spinning at an incredible rate. The Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 on the other hand has a dual 120mm fan system and therefore they can spin much slower, while generating significantly better air flow. At 1,500 rpm the noise levels peak at just over 33 dBa, barely audible in a performance gaming system. Fantastic results.
The AMD HD6990 has sold well since it was released, with limited stock still in the channel today. As we said earlier in the review, the performance of this discrete card is without question, however the reference cooler is noisy and struggles to maintain sub 90c temperatures under load. Always a concern after spending £550 on a video card. We always question AMD using those tiny red fans, but our concerns have fallen on deaf ears.
Arctic have released the Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 to redress this problem, offering the high end AMD enthusiast audience an alternative solution without the need to opt for watercooling. The Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 performs better than we thought it would, reducing temperatures by 4c when idle and around 23c when gaming. These are the kind of the results that the enthusiast audience will want to see. We also really do admire the engineering standards, because it is a millimetre perfect fitting.
As well as improving thermal performance, the Twin Turbo 6990 manages to reduce noise emissions to around 30 dBa when gaming. It is barely audible and will be likely drown out completely by several case fans in a performance oriented system.
So far there are no downsides, but sadly this cooler is a significant investment, with a recommended retail price of $149.99. There are no UK retailers stocking the cooler yet, but we would make an educated guess of around £100 inc vat in the UK. This would make the total cost of HD6990 ownership around the £650 mark, which might be tough to swallow for many. Compared to the nearest competitor however, you would still be saving £50 against a reference cooled GTX590. In that regard it doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
Pros:
- Class leading cooling performance, reducing temperatures by 20c+.
- Almost silent.
- Easy to install.
- Very high engineering standards.
Cons:
- It is $150 (around £100).
Kitguru says: One of the best and most capable coolers on the market, just be prepared to pay for it.
