Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 mini review and support

[Biker]

I would definitely not believe that if I were you.

The only reason AC say that is because they have insufficient parts in the cooler pack to cater for the 285...

 

[OnBoard]

one question on the VRM does it run hotter on the 280 than on the 285 and if so is that why your saying air cooling would be fine, where as you added heat sinks to yours because it was a 280 correct?

Yes, GTX 280 VRM runs the hottest, then it's GTX 260 65nm cards and then 55nm cards with their redesigned VRM area. I say plain air would be fine, as the GTX 285 stock cooler doesn't make contact at all on the VRMs:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...959513&article_id=672346&page=1&show=original
(above is GTX 280 stock cooler and below is GTX 285 stock cooler)

Those two things (memory power supply parts?) next to the memory on top are how ever cooled in stock cooler and should be with Accelero as well.

Made an image to help out. Red squares are the spots that the stock cooler makes contact with thermal pads. Those two spots on top and under NVIO aren't cooled on the GTX 280 stock cooler at all, so doubt they'd need to be on GTX 285 either.

Yellow marks the VRM's that I'd sink too, even if it's not needed. If you have extra sink at hand, it won't hurt, copper sinks would be overkill though

edit: also the metal frame around the core should be removed (if your card has one).

okay now I can confirm they are optional on the 55nm gtx cards both ram and vrm cooler but I'm not sure I believe that.

I would definitely not believe that if I were you.

The only reason AC say that is because they have insufficient parts in the cooler pack to cater for the 285...

I wouldn't believe it either. They say the same thing for GTX 260 65nm. Max for VRM is 140c and 105C for RAM (guessing that's right). They say that in full load VRMs goes to 80C and RAM to 70C.

They don't however mention what programs was "full load" and even then you must use 80% fan speed or above. FurMark & Crysis will surely be more that "full load".

Fun part is, 55nm cards don't have temp sensor in VRM area and no card has temp sensors on the memory. If they'll over heat, you don't know it

 

[Biker]

Fun part is, 55nm cards don't have temp sensor in VRM area and no card has temp sensors on the memory. If they'll over heat, you don't know it

That is exactly the problem Onboard, no way to measure without using expensive equipment and a fiddly procedure to do so either way.....

Frankly we have no idea what temps the 55nm VRM's are rising to and with AC amongst others are qiving us only some of the vaguest points of reference since the dawn of time (none, basically) then i'd say 'sink 'em and 'sink 'em good unless you want your card to go pop at some point because I dont know about you folks but the whole point I run these coolers (apart from vastly reduced noise!) is so I can run my 280 @ 720/1584/2500.

When pushed to such clocks at 2560 x 1600 with a lot of AA I can tell you that can be a lot of amps through the VRM's

Ps. don't forget to mod the bios so the AC fans are @ 100% when the gpu temp maxes out (58-60 degrees), that really helps keep the VRM temps down...

 

[OnBoard]

Ps. don't forget to mod the bios so the AC fans are @ 100% when the gpu temp maxes out (58-60 degrees), that really helps keep the VRM temps down...

Was that for me, or in general ?) I still have it on auto settings and it's been @ 40% constant the day I got it. A little ramp up in fan would be nice though, you are right. It would only happen when gaming, but I wouldn't make it 100% still

 

[Biker]

Was that for me, or in general ?) I still have it on auto settings and it's been @ 40% constant the day I got it. A little ramp up in fan would be nice though, you are right. It would only happen when gaming, but I wouldn't make it 100% still

He he he ...

That was a general

I've got a pretty good Nibitor template that works really well and the fans ramp up beautifully from 43 degrees (40%) to max out at 58 Celcius. I've got a 280 and I find this really calms down the VRM's before they get a chance to heat up too much when i'm dragging 80+ amps through them

Edit:

Settings here:

Tick "acoustic enhancement" if you want really smooth transitions to new fan speeds as well...

 

[trt740]

Yes, GTX 280 VRM runs the hottest, then it's GTX 260 65nm cards and then 55nm cards with their redesigned VRM area. I say plain air would be fine, as the GTX 285 stock cooler doesn't make contact at all on the VRMs:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...959513&article_id=672346&page=1&show=original
(above is GTX 280 stock cooler and below is GTX 285 stock cooler)

Those two things (memory power supply parts?) next to the memory on top are how ever cooled in stock cooler and should be with Accelero as well.

Made an image to help out. Red squares are the spots that the stock cooler makes contact with thermal pads. Those two spots on top and under NVIO aren't cooled on the GTX 280 stock cooler at all, so doubt they'd need to be on GTX 285 either.



Yellow marks the VRM's that I'd sink too, even if it's not needed. If you have extra sink at hand, it won't hurt, copper sinks would be overkill though

http://img.techpowerup.org/090609/gtx285_cooling451.jpg

edit: also the metal frame around the core should be removed (if your card has one).





I wouldn't believe it either. They say the same thing for GTX 260 65nm. Max for VRM is 140c and 105C for RAM (guessing that's right). They say that in full load VRMs goes to 80C and RAM to 70C.

They don't however mention what programs was "full load" and even then you must use 80% fan speed or above. FurMark & Crysis will surely be more that "full load".

Fun part is, 55nm cards don't have temp sensor in VRM area and no card has temp sensors on the memory. If they'll over heat, you don't know it

well it looks to me like the cooler was designed well but the heat sinks on the board were not thought out right at all.

 

[Biker]

well it looks to me like the cooler was designed well but the heat sinks on the board were not thought out right at all.

Exactly.

We tried to tell them (AC) many times from many sources before the web reviews went live but they diddn't listen; hence about 70% of this thread

 

[AsRock]

Yeah if it's one thing those coolers fail or in fact most is the VRM sinks. Just some cheap ass crap with a kick ass cooler.. Shame same deal for the one for the 2900XT too but at least that screwed which was sweet as there was no worry about riping a chip of the PCB.


BTW nice bunch of tests there thanks .

 

[weiern]

Not good... I hope I didn't break anything. The middle fan makes almost like a clicking noise. When i turn my computer on its side so the fan sits vertical the noise stops. My finger nudged it by accident when it was spinning. I guess that caused the fan to now wobble which makes the noise. Also the middle fan is the first fan to stop spinning, it stop rather quickly, quicker then the other two..I am freaking out!

 

[OnBoard]

Is it making contact with the frame? Don't know if there is give in the bearings, but doubt the plastic it self bent. Anyhow, I'd try to see if you can set it back level again (spin it with finger and look what side/fan blade comes closest to the frame).

 

[weiern]

it looks like on the actual fan the plastic is cracked.. or at least there is some kind of space between 2 blades

 

[OnBoard]

Google picture search ended me up in this thread:

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia-cooling/483233-review-arctic-cooling-accelero-xtreme-gtx280.html

Happy happy joy joy update:

I did end up with cutting off the original stock cooler's vrm sink and glued it on with epoxy. The results are so far good. Thanks to WaLshy11 who pointed out this great "mini review", containing a lot of instructions and pictures I needed to feel comfortable about this operation: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...84#post1282484. Obviously it voids the warranty, but I really dont care having used glue for most parts anyways.

Latest results: More than 20 degrees celcius decrease in vrm temps after this mod. I feel good

Nice that people get help outside this forum too Google spiders seem to like TPU though, quite a few pictures point to this thread, if you are searching for accelero

 

[OnBoard]

it looks like on the actual fan the plastic is cracked.. or at least there is some kind of space between 2 blades

Oh, that doesn't sound good Either try and get it replaced or cut the power to the middle fan and use it only with the two. That would mean a bit of soldering work though, as wires are routed trought the fans.

 

[weiern]

i might see the problem, it looks like the fan is a little bit lower then the others. There is a metal ring exposed that is not exposed on the other 2. Actually i dont think it is cracked, it might be barely... but if i could somehow take the front fan grid thing off of the main PCB then i could maybe fix it.

 

[OnBoard]

i might see the problem, it looks like the fan is a little bit lower then the others. There is a metal ring exposed that is not exposed on the other 2. Actually i dont think it is cracked, it might be barely... but if i could somehow take the front fan grid thing off of the main PCB then i could maybe fix it.

It should come off quite easily. Just be carefull not to break any clips that hold it in place. Will certainly help to get to the "right" side of things.

 

[weiern]

I successfully got it off, and unfortunately the fan is cracked. I was able to push the fan back up making it so the metal ring disappears but the crack got a little bigger. i am wondering if super glue would be a bad idea...

 

[trt740]

Exactly.

We tried to tell them (AC) many times from many sources before the web reviews went live but they diddn't listen; hence about 70% of this thread

when you cut the enzotech mosfits with the dremmel what attachment did you use I tried a cutting disk and that didn't go well. got hot as hell and made a mess.

 

[weiern]

So now since i pushed up my fan so the metal ring is covered up i basically get zero noise, hooray! But... I still have a cracked fan to deal with. The crack runs below a sticker, which in turn is holding everything together. So i am not really sure if i should be worried that one day one of my fans might just explode? The crack isn't like the fan is split in two it looks minor but it still is a crack, so...

 

[Biker]

when you cut the enzotech mosfits with the dremmel what attachment did you use I tried a cutting disk and that didn't go well. got hot as hell and made a mess.

I used an extremely thin and sharp HSS saw type cutting disc and stuck each heatsink tightly in a small vice to hold it steady and then trimmed the legs using low - medium rpm to combat overheating...

Something very similar to this..

The whole process was not my best ever and I did lose a couple of legs along the way but if you are careful and determined you can do it pretty cleanly...

 

[trt740]

Okay guys the cooler I received was missing the double sided tape for the spacers, and the rear large heat sink didn't fit because a component between my ram and my rear chip was too tall ( the screws wouldn't tighten and even if they would the heatsink didn't make contact with the ram or the rear chip) so I had to cut the rear large heatsink in two and use thermal glue to attach it to the rear small HD chip. I then had to add 6 heatsinks to the ram that wasn't covered by the ram heatsinks that came with the cooler. I also added several misc heatsinks to the vrms. This took me about 3 hours because it appears I received a 280 gtx accelerro extreme without some of the up dated components to make it compatible with a 285 gtx . I can tell you these heatsinks are not compatable with all the 285 gtx cards. Mines a ref model from PNY and the man large heatsink didn't fit.

 

[weiern]

Hmm well I am pretty pleased with the results from the Accelero, perhaps I wanted a little cooler for my idle temps but i have at least a 10c difference which is good. I will probably be taking off the back plate seeing how I kind of jerry rigged it on there with tape/thermal tape. That is unfortunate seeing how it technically doesn't work properly on the 285 (it does but it wasn't made for it). Maybe I will do future modding to my 285. Oh haha it is a pain in the buttinsky that this badboy takes up PCI 3 spots in my computer. I can't seem to get Nibitor working, if anyone could help that would be great.


BY the way I did not receive the tape for the spacers either.

 

[trt740]

Hmm well I am pretty pleased with the results from the Accelero, perhaps I wanted a little cooler for my idle temps but i have at least a 10c difference which is good. I will probably be taking off the back plate seeing how I kind of jerry rigged it on there with tape/thermal tape. That is unfortunate seeing how it technically doesn't work properly on the 285 (it does but it wasn't made for it). Maybe I will do future modding to my 285. Oh haha it is a pain in the buttinsky that this badboy takes up PCI 3 spots in my computer. I can't seem to get Nibitor working, if anyone could help that would be great.

Oh the cooler works great on my 285 gtx but none of the heatsink were compatible. I had to add 6 heatsinks on the ram and 4 large low profile heatsinks to the VRM area. My gpu never goes over 53 c overclocked and using folding home. It idles at 38c. However, what a total pain in the ass the heatsink incompatibility was. Arctic cooler needs to fix this shit and it wouldn't take much to do.

 

[trt740]

Okay guys the cooler I received was missing the double sided tape for the spacers, and the rear large heat sink didn't fit because a component between my ram and my rear chip was too tall ( the screws wouldn't tighten and even if they would the heatsink didn't make contact with the ram or the rear chip) so I had to cut the rear large heatsink in two and use thermal glue to attach it to the rear small HD chip. I then had to add 6 heatsinks to the ram that wasn't covered by the ram heatsinks that came with the cooler. I also added several misc heatsinks to the vrms. This took me about 3 hours because it appears I received a 280 gtx accelerro extreme without some of the up dated components to make it compatible with a 285 gtx . I can tell you these heatsinks are not compatable with all the 285 gtx cards. Mines a ref model from PNY and the man large heatsink didn't fit.

The part of this card in red was way to tall for the large heatsink to fit right. Also this is a picture of a leadtek card from a TPU review, mine has several differences and doesn't look like this card or for that matter Tux brother either. The main differences are in the rear portion of the card. Also my pcb is green, not sure if that matter but according to the reviews I read it is a ref design made buy Nvidia directly and sold buy PNY.

 

[weiern]

Hey trt740 are you using the backplate given. haha mine is so sketchily put on.

 

[OnBoard]

Okay guys the cooler I received was missing the double sided tape for the spacers

BY the way I did not receive the tape for the spacers either.

Did you guys look in the screw bag? I said in my review that the tape is missing on the feet, but Arctic Cooling has gone different route and supplied 4x round double sided tapes that you put under the spacers.

edit: oh I don't have them either, saw them on another review and remembered wrong. Just checked the first page picture and only screws on the pag :/

Here is the picture of the missing tapes http://ht4u.net/images/reviews/2009/arctic_cooling_accelero_extreme_gtx280//liefer.jpg