Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA Cooler Review

In order to test the efficiency of the Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA Cooler we installed this cooler on a HD 6990 and ran some tests.

We gathered idle temperatures by leaving the system on the desktop in an idle state for 15 minutes, we then collect the average idle temperature using GPU-Z . For gaming load temperatures we put the Unigine Heaven DirectX 11 benchmark on for a few runs through and then took the average temperature for the period as recorded by GPU-Z. For Furmark we ran a 10 minute full screen burn in test and then took the average temperature.

Using Unigine Heaven is a more realistic way of collecting gaming load temperatures as opposed to FurMark which doesn’t replicate a real-world scenario but is still useful for checking the maximum temperatures. To account for differences in ambient temperatures we use delta temperature figures.

To get the acoustic performance of the Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 VGA Cooler we used a decibel meter held 20 centimetres away from the fans and took a reading when the HD 6990 was in an idle state , gaming load scenario and under Furmark load.

The same tests were performed on the stock HD 6990 cooler so that we have some point of comparison, it also makes sense to compare it to the stock cooler as this is the cooler most people will want and need to upgrade from.

The full details of the testing are below.

Testing Method:

• Average GPU temperature from a 15 minute Furmark test
• Average GPU temperature from a 15 minute gaming load simulation test
• Average GPU temperature from a 15 minute desktop idle simulation test (with brief gaming load simulation before to prevent the start-up cool period from affecting results)
• The cooler’s fans are set to PWM unless stated otherwise
• Tests are repeated 3 times for consistency
• Delta temperatures (Recorded temperature minus Ambient temperature) are always used. For this testing the ambient was 24 degrees celcius (+/- 1 degree).
• The supplied VGA thermal paste is always used for fair testing purposes
• There is a 1 degree margin of error in ambient temperature testing and GPU temperature testing.
• There is a 1 dBA margin of error in acoustic performance testing

Software used:

• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
• GPU-Z
• Unigine Heaven
• Furmark

Test system:

• ASUS P8Z77-V
• Intel Core i5 3570K with Scythe Mugen 3
• 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3
• AMD Radeon HD 6990 at stock clocks with Antilles BIOS switch off
• 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage)
• Antec High Current Gamer 620W
• Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0