Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA Cooler Review

The top of the Arctic Accelero 6990 is dominated by the two 120mm PWM fans. As you can see there is a lot of dense aluminium heatsink-action going on. For those of you who are maybe wondering, yes the black shroud is made of plastic but it is a hard, durable and matte plastic so it gives off the impression of being metallic.

Arctic have really gone to town on the heat pipes with 5 copper heat pipes per GPU. However, we are slightly disappointed to see Arctic haven’t nickel plated the copper heat pipes to reduce corrosion that copper is so vulnerable too. Although that said, that could easily add a significant amount more to the products overall RRP and most people wouldn’t use their HD 6990 for long enough to actually experience long term degradation of the copper heat pipes.

From the back you can see more clearly how the cooler directly interacts with the HD 6990 PCB. You get two copper contact plates for each of the two HD 6970 GPUs that make up the HD 6990. There are also shaded metal areas where thermal pads should be placed – gaps are left for all the memory modules and the VRM. You may also be able to see the entire underside of cooling plate area is covered with clear plastic except where the shaded areas are, this is to make sure there is no risk of metal-on-metal on the HD 6990 PCB that could cause short circuiting. Do not remove this plastic layer.

From this angle you can see more clearly that the Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 is essentially two VGA coolers sandwiched together. Each GPU has its own heat sink and fan combo which is joined in the middle by a large flat heatsink assembly designed to help cool the VRM and RAM.

In terms of size the Accelero 6990 is a little over two slots, but ultimately this shouldn’t matter for most because this cooler is still CrossFireX compatible and if you have a HD 6990 then you should have a motherboard with at least 4 full sized PCI Express lanes anyway.