Hardware News

Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 VGA Cooler Review

Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan

2007-07-12 03:47:10.0


Over the past few years, quite a large industry has evolved around the notion that computers don’t need to be noisy. With this in mind, HardwareLogic has just posted a review of the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 passive video card heatsink. Naturally it is completely silent, but does it perform well enough to cool modern GPUs?

Let’s see what they had to say:

“After spending some quality time grilling my X1950Pro on the Accelero S1, I have some mixed feelings, but overall am pretty impressed. The simple fact that a relatively inexpensive passive cooler can run a performance mid-range card like the X1950Pro is pretty impressive. What is even more attracitve is that this cooler can be had for the same price as many other popular GPU cooling products whether they are passively cooled or noisy fans. The only part that created the mixed feelings was the lacking voltage regulator heatspreader for the X1950Pro cards and the somewhat unreliable RAM heatsinks.”


In passive mode, the Accelero S1 could not outperform the “stock” HIS IceQ3 cooler. However, it should be noted that the S1 was tested using the included thermal interface material (TIM), where as the IceQ3 benefited from vastly superior Artic Silver Ceramique. If both coolers were tested using the same thermal compound, I strongly suspect that they would have performed identically. As such, I believe the Accelero is a solid product. If you plan on overclocking, yet want a quiet cooling solution, direct a low-speed 120mm fan towards the cooler, and you should achieve terrific overall performance.

Click here to read the full review.
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