Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA Cooler Review

We can see from the majority of our testing that Arctic have designed a solid product in the Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA cooler. The product is very easy to mount and the overall design of it means it will fit in your case fine if you can already fit a HD 6990 in – if you can’t fit a HD 6990 in then you have no reason to buy this! Add to that the fact the cooler also looks great – the black and white aesthetic plays it safe but the black and white colour combination is one of the most popular these days along with red and black and a few others.

The Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA Cooler was more than capable of taming GPU core temperatures, we actually saw up to a huge 20 degree decrease on the GPU temperatures under Unigine Heaven Gaming Load. Yet we still have a slightly bitter taste left after the Arctic cooler showed its inefficiency at keeping the VRM cool when compared to the stock design. Although, this was “redeemed” to an extent by the fact that we never saw the VRM temperatures get close to dangerous levels – even under Furmark it only reached 80 degrees.

The main design win that the Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA Cooler has, is with its vastly superior acoustic performance. The stock HD 6990 cooler really does put your ears through torture, The HD 6990’s lowest noise output was 50 dBA at idle. While the Arctic cooler never got louder than 45 dBA under any usage scenario (including Furmark where the stock cooler hit 74 dBA).  Hugely impressive stuff from the Arctic cooler.

For me the noise reduction offered by this product alone is enough to make me want to go out and buy it. The added cooling performance and clean aesthetics are both just added bonuses. Costing £76 ($96) this is a costly VGA cooling solution but considering there are no other options apart from water cooling your HD 6990, which could cost anywhere from £200 and upwards, £76 is actually a very small price to pay. You should also consider you are getting two 120mm fans, 10 heat pipes and 86 aluminium heat fins, so for £76 you actually get a lot of spec for your money.

In our opinion Arctic have created the best solution to the hot and noisy HD 6990, that does not require the excesses, risk, hassle and expense of a water cooling set up. In that sense this is one of the most innovative VGA coolers we have ever seen. Weaker-than-stock VRM cooling and the fact that this cooler doesn’t support its own weight very well stopped this cooler from snatching the Editor’s Choice award. Though we are still very impressed with this offering from Arctic and we look forward to similar product from them if AMD ever gets around the releasing the HD 7990.