Design and Functionality

Accelero XTREME 4870X2 looks very similar to the same cooler for GeForce GTX 260/280 we reviewed before. The new solution measures 295 x 96 x 54 mm and weighs 680 g.

Three 92x12 mm fans in a plastic frame cover the entire front surface of the cooler heatsink:

You can easily remove the outer casing with the fans and take a closer look at the cooler heart – its heatsink:

The heatsink is formed of two aluminum plate arrays, each consisting of 0.4 mm plates spaced out at 2 mm distance.

Both heatsink arrays sit on copper heatpipes 6 mm in diameter. The cooler uses a total of eight heatpipes. They twist in a very beautiful manner on the way from one array to another:

The heatsink is built in a very curious way. As you know, Radeon HD 4870 X2 uses two graphics processors that is why Accelero XTREME 4870X2 has two copper heat-spreader plates. If we look from the side where the graphics card outs are located, then we will see that the heatpipes from first heat-spreader go through the top part of the cooler heatsink, and the heatpipes from the second heat-spreader go through the lower part of the same heatsink and transfer the heat to the smaller heatsink as well.

The aluminum heatsink plates are pressed against the heatpipes, while in the heat-spreader plates we found traces of soldering, which guarantees the best contact:

All three fans rotate with the same speed that can be adjusted in the interval from 1000 to 2000 RPM using pulse-width modulation method (PWM):

The total airflow from the fans is claimed at 81 CFM and the level of generated noise that Arctic Cooling traditionally measures in Sones shouldn’t exceed 0.5 Sone.

Fluid dynamic bearings used inside the fan rotors should last more than the 6 years promised by the manufacturer warranty although the fans MTBF is not specified among the cooler parameters.

The maximum power consumption of each fan shouldn’t exceed 1.8 W. they are powered via default 4-pin power connector on the graphics card.

The base surface of each Accelero XTREME 4870X2 heat-spreader is covered with a thin layer of Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal paste, which is one of the best thermal interfaces today:

After we installed and removed the cooler, we got the following thermal compound imprints:

I wish there were more thermal paste included than just for one installation, but I am pretty sure that after you see the benchmark results, you won’t feel like removing this cooler from your graphics card :)