KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
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.
